Transforming Health Care and Strengthening Results

Relationship-Based Care^®

Culture is Everything

Relationship-Based Care® (RBC) is a culture transformation care model and operational framework for improving employee engagement and retention, patient experience, quality, safety, and financial performance. Relationship-Based Care advances the culture of health care organizations by focusing on three key relationships: relationship with self, with colleagues, and with patients/families. Structures, processes, and relationships are designed to support every team member’s ability to provide attuned, compassionate, high-quality care.

In a Relationship-Based Care organization employees feel empowered and trusted (because they are) and therefore are engaged and satisfied. The Relationship-Based Care model and supporting programs for implementation integrate eight dimensions that support high quality clinical caregiving. These eight dimensions are Healing Culture, Patient and Family (in the center of care), Leadership, Teamwork, Interprofessional Practice, Care Delivery, System Design, and Evidence.

Move Forward Together

Cultivate shared ownership and a deep sense of purpose, so your entire organization can attain extraordinary results.

Why Relationship-Based Care?

Relationship-Based Care is not unusual for its focus on relationships. It’s unusual because it helps organizations point all of its people, structures, and processes toward creating the best possible experience for patients, families, and all who work in health care. It is often said that Relationship-Based Care works from the inside-out, meaning it appeals to and optimizes the very best of what already exists in people. The eight dimensions of the Relationship-Based Care Model are: 1) healing culture, 2) patients & families, 3) leadership, 4) teamwork, 5) interprofessional practice, 6) care delivery, 7) system design, and 8) evidence. When each of these dimensions is carefully addressed organizational excellence and culture transformation are both systemic and sustainable.

The Impact of Relationship-Based Care

A Relationship-Based Care implementation focuses on the deep satisfaction all people working in health care feel when patients and families have the best possible experiences of care. Colleagues will be inspired toward more active participation as they engage in a shared governance process in which their great ideas become a reality, and they see the positive impact of their work through measurable outcomes. Use of Relationship-Based Care has been shown to positively impact: patient safety and clinical quality, patient experience, employee engagement, nurse satisfaction, and financial performance.

Care Delivery

Nothing defines the patient experience more than the way an organization delivers care. Factors such as wait times, noise levels, and convenience of parking are overshadowed by patients’ experiences with the people they meet. An exam room overdue for remodeling is quickly forgotten by people who feel respected, protected, and listened to. Similarly, a room with eye-catching art and a million-dollar view is worth nothing to people who don’t feel respected, believed, seen or safe. How we structure and organize care delivery impacts whether clinicians and care teams create compassionate human connections with patients and their loved ones. In Relationship-Based Care organizations patients, families, and all who work in health care, feel held with compassion and dignity, in every interaction because the structures, processes and people that constitute the care delivery system are all pointed toward the same goal.

Commitment to my Co-workers

Teamwork requires people from all disciplines and departments to define and embrace a shared purpose and work together with trust and mutual respect. Consistent, visible teamwork is essential to the provision of high quality, safe care. Healthy team relationships are demonstrated by the behaviors described in the Commitment to My Co-workers statements. These common-sense agreements have been helping improve team relationships and employee engagement in organizations across the world since 1988. The Commitment to My Co-Worker statements can be used for any sort of team-building discussions. They can also be used as agreements for council and committee meetings and as behavioral standards for employee performance reviews and developmental conversations.

Relationship-Based Care: A Model for Transforming Practice

The result of Creative Health Care Management’s 25 years experience in health care, this book provides health care leaders with basic concepts for transforming their care delivery system into one that is patient and family centered and built on the power of relationships.

I2E2: Leading Lasting Change

In I2E2: Leading Lasting Change, Jayne Felgen shares her in-depth and elegantly simple formula for inspiring and leading real change at all levels of any organization.

Advancing Professional Nursing Practice: Relationship-Based Care and the ANA Standards

The result of Creative Health Care Management’s 25 years experience in health care, this book provides health care leaders with basic concepts for transforming their care delivery system into one that is patient and family centered and built on the power of relationships.

Primary Nursing: Person-Centered Care Delivery System Design

Primary Nursing describes a model of care delivery that while being nearly 5 decades mature, continues to provide the highest level of person-centered care for thousands of patients and their loved ones.

A Quick Guide to Relationship-Based Care

A Quick Guide to Relationship-Based Care is a 68-page booklet outlining the basics of Relationship-Based Care®. This valuable resource is ideal for orientation of the entire workforce in organizations implementing Relationship-Based Care.

Commitment to My Co-Workers© Health Care Card

Recently edited and redesigned to increase clarity, they are used by thousands of health care workers around the world.

Advancing Relationship-Based Cultures

Advancing Relationship-Based Cultures explains and expands a fundamental and often overlooked truth in health care: It is the confluence of relational and clinical competence that advances relationship-based healing cultures.

Relationship-Based Care: A Model for Transforming Practice

The result of Creative Health Care Management’s 25 years experience in health care, this book provides health care leaders with basic concepts for transforming their care delivery system into one that is patient and family centered and built on the power of relationships.

I2E2: Leading Lasting Change

In I2E2: Leading Lasting Change, Jayne Felgen shares her in-depth and elegantly simple formula for inspiring and leading real change at all levels of any organization.

Advancing Professional Nursing Practice: Relationship-Based Care and the ANA Standards

The result of Creative Health Care Management’s 25 years experience in health care, this book provides health care leaders with basic concepts for transforming their care delivery system into one that is patient and family centered and built on the power of relationships.

Primary Nursing: Person-Centered Care Delivery System Design

Primary Nursing describes a model of care delivery that while being nearly 5 decades mature, continues to provide the highest level of person-centered care for thousands of patients and their loved ones.

A Quick Guide to Relationship-Based Care

A Quick Guide to Relationship-Based Care is a 68-page booklet outlining the basics of Relationship-Based Care®. This valuable resource is ideal for orientation of the entire workforce in organizations implementing Relationship-Based Care.

Commitment to My Co-Workers© Health Care Card

Recently edited and redesigned to increase clarity, they are used by thousands of health care workers around the world.

Advancing Relationship-Based Cultures

Advancing Relationship-Based Cultures explains and expands a fundamental and often overlooked truth in health care: It is the confluence of relational and clinical competence that advances relationship-based healing cultures.

A moment of nursing burnout as a nurse sits on steps

Overcome Nursing Burnout: 5 Career-Changing Solutions

June 6, 2025

Nursing burnout is on the rise, and your patients are paying the price. One study found that staff burnout was directly connected to decreased patient safety, lower patient satisfaction, and

A team of four health care workers laugh together, demonstrating the essentails of a caring culture

Your Guide to the Six Essentials of a Caring Culture

April 3, 2025

Culture is the cornerstone of excellent patient care. And our Relationship-Based Care Model provides the framework you need to transform your culture. By integrating the six essentials of a caring

Nurse Leader Participating in a Development Program | CHCM

“Love Bombing” with Grady Memorial Hospital

January 7, 2025

Creative Health Care Management would like to acknowledge Leah Satonica and Rachel Algeo, authors of “Designing a Supportive Culture to Flourish Together” published in the December 2024 Journal of Nursing

MAGNET®, Magnet Recognition Program®, ANCC Magnet Recognition®, Journey to Magnet Excellence®, Pathway to Excellence® Program, Pathway to Excellence in Long Term Care®, Demographic Data Collection Tool®, DDCT®, Practice Transition Accreditation Program® (PTAP) are registered trademarks of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The products and services of Creative Health Care Management are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC. All rights reserved. The content presented in here is the expressed opinion of the author/presenter and not that of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

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