Celebrate our 20 years of Patient-Centred Care

Médecins Sans Frontières has a longstanding dedication to providing medical care for patients. We are continually striving to adapt, improve and expand our medical care for people who are in crisis or otherwise excluded from healthcare. With our Patient-Centred T-shirt collection, you can actively support this cause along with us.

What Is Patient-Centred Care?

Patient-centred care is an approach that puts patients first and foremost. Patients’ lived realities and constraints are taken into account to design healthcare services that are adapted to those realities. We see the potential for pioneering quality, patient-centred care for women in crisis-affected contexts, with self-care models facilitated through community-based programmes, digital methods, and peer-to-peer support.

An example of our patient-based care involves:   

• Adapting clinic opening hours to suit patients, such as early morning clinics for people on their way to work, or late-night clinics for sex workers. 

• Providing a three- or six-month supply of daily ARVs instead of the usual one-month supply to reduce the time and money spent to regularly visit clinics to pick up medication. 

• Self-care is an opportunity to improve patient-centred and quality care through empowering people with the knowledge, autonomy and choice to access safe, effective and timely care, with support from a skilled healthcare provider if and when they need it.

• Listening to patients’ challenges and developing realistic treatment strategies together during clinical consultations or counselling sessions. 

We continue our mission to improve the four key elements of quality care, namely safety, effectiveness, timeliness and equity of our care. Now, 50 years on, it is in the fifth domain of patient-centredness which both intersects with and underpins the other four, that we hope to achieve our greatest cumulative effect.

Join MSF in Supporting Patient Care

We’re inviting you to get involved in our philanthropic endeavours by sporting our Patient-Centred Care T-shirt. This collection showcases the professional principles that guide MSF’s work. This includes the medical ethics of autonomy, beneficence, confidentiality, non malfeasance (do not harm), and equity and justice. We are held accountable in line with medical ethics and humanitarian principles by our patients, the MSF network, to each other and to those who support us.

The hands represent the kindness and generosity of donors like you, who enable us to provide- patient-centred lifesaving medical care to people who would otherwise be denied access to even the most basic healthcare.

Be Part of MSFs Legacy: 20 Years of Patient-Centred Care
Working with communities and patients and finding ways to provide quality treatment in ways that match the realities of people’s lives has characterised MSF’s work in South Africa over the past 20 years. When imported models of care didn’t work in local contexts, we found better, more relevant ways of working that put patients and communities at the centre.  

Find out more about 10 key areas where patient-centred care made a difference for the people we assist.  

Show your support by wearing it. Shop the patient-centred care t-shirts today.
The unisex T-shirt collection is available in a range of sizes in grey, black, and white.