HOPE, relationships, and collaborative goal-setting | Interview with Tamara Vesel, MD [positiveexperience.org/blog]

HOPE-informed care begins with identifying, honoring, and promoting child and family sources of strength and stamina. That knowledge creates the basis for working together to set and achieve the goals of care. Parents and families, of course, know about their child, their own values and beliefs, and their support systems. Providers bring a separate set of knowledge – which is why children and families seek care. In medicine, the process of recognizing and reconciling the perspectives of patients and families, and of the providers to develop treatment plans is called goal concordant care.

To find out more about goal concordant care, we sat down with Tamara Vesel, MD, Chief of Division of Palliative Care in the Department of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center. Through goal concordant care, Dr. Vesel shares stories of relationship building by finding care plans through the values of the patients and their families. The HOPE framework promotes partnership between the caregiver and the child, youth, or family. Through Dr. Vesel’s work, this partnership with families helps foster trust and honor the needs of families and patients of all ages.

Relationship building and goal concordant care

I do believe that taking care of children or taking care of the elderly has many similarities since this is all about families and their values.”

[Click here to read the full interview.]