The Aliki Initiative

The Aliki Initiative is a curriculum and clinical program at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (JHBMC) that fosters teaching and practicing person-centered care.

Initiative mission and background

Too often, the demands on medical trainees’ time – from the volume and complexity of clinical work, to keeping up with learning – can be so great that knowing patients as individuals gets left behind. In 2007, the Aliki Initiative began as an educational experiment to address this challenge, and the initiative continues today. On the Aliki service, one of Bayview’s four inpatient medical teaching teams, this curriculum provides communication tools and teaching to facilitate knowing each patient as a person – their life context outside the hospital, their perspectives and priorities – and using this knowledge to provide better medical care.

How it works

A core group of committed faculty attend on this service and meet regularly in a faculty learning community. Teams are encouraged to round at the bedside as much as possible, using the opportunity to hear the patient’s voice. Teams document using a person-centered History and Physical format that reinforces concepts in the Aliki curriculum. It includes questions such as, “What is a typical day like? Who and what are important to the patient? What concerns might a patient have about their medications – cost, regimen complexity, side effects, or other concerns?” Trainees learn about patient-centered transitions of care, through contacting outpatient clinicians about patients’ hospitalizations and calling patients after discharge from the hospital.    

Ultimately, trainees learn to prioritize person-centered questions in their communication with patients and in tasks for the day. When patients’ priorities and perspectives are known by the team, shared decision-making is enhanced, and patients can have greater trust in, and adherence to, medical plans. Our goal is for trainees to apply these approaches to communication and person-centered care to their future clinical work and teaching, in any clinical setting.  

Trainee experiences and outcomes with the Aliki Service

Patient experiences and outcomes with the Aliki Service