direct patient care is often a difficult concept to understand. There is no cohesive definition to this phrase in our society. For example, when searching the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institute of Health (NIH) for direct patient care, there are no concrete definitions. However, often healthcare providers discuss the concept of direct and indirect patient care within the healthcare community. Direct patient care is thought of as “hands on” care with patients, while indirect patient care may be thought of as careers that have no direct contact with patients such as hospital administrators or billing and coding professionals. In this chapter, we will define direct patient care as healthcare services provided directly to patients either suspected of having an ailment or being treated for a physical or mental illness.

Direct patient care roles are driven by provider orders. However, before we address provider orders, let’s take a look at what exactly a provider is. Traditionally, a provider was a board-certified medical physician. Physicians would provide medical care to their patients. Today, in addition to physicians licensed as Medical Doctors (M.D.) or Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O), medical providers include certified Physician’s Assistants (PA-C) and Nurse Practitioners (NP’s).

All three of the healthcare practitioners or providers mentioned above give “providers orders” to the various professionals within this chapter. A physician’s order or doctor’s order, consists of directing the medical team to carry out a specific service such as diagnostic testing, skilled nursing services, physical therapy, etc. For example, in a cardiology office a physician will give an order to a medical assistant to perform an electrocardiogram on a patient. Another example is that an PA-C will order a registered nurse (RN) to start an IV prior to a surgical procedure. While the medical provider gives the order, the healthcare setting is team-based [KP3] as discussed earlier in the textbook.

Direct patient care can occur in various settings. This type of medical care may occur face-to-face in medical clinics, a physician’s office, or the in-patient hospital setting. Direct patient care may also occur in a telehealth-based setting in which medical providers attend to patient’s needs via the internet. telemedicine involves clinical medical care provided at a distance through technology. While telemedicine has been around for a long time, the Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for medical providers to utilize distance treatment more often. It is now more regularly utilized in various hospital and physician office settings.

Healthcare workers who work in direct patient care settings often have distinctive qualities and characteristics. These characteristics include strong communication skills, the ability to demonstrate empathy during patient care, be passionate about helping others, demonstrate attention to detail and be a team player with coworkers. Direct patient care workers do work with bodily fluids and sometimes these workers see patients during very challenging health diseases and conditions varying from trauma injuries, surgeries, heart disease and cancer. All healthcare workers are trained and versed in standard precautions, which we will take a look at next.

Attributions

1. Figure 5.1: image released under the Pexels License
2. Figure 5.2: image by Karolina Grabowska is released under Pexel license