What are your favourite resources for self-management support?

[Health Navigator NZ]

We all have our favourite resources and toolkits. How about we all post our favourite ones here and share with the wider Long-Term Conditions Network. 

Supporting people to self-manage

This is a brief literature review from the NHS Scotland 2012. Few years old now, but does highlight some useful key messages summarised below from the Executive Summary:

• No 'one size fits all' - There is no one education solution to suit all groups of healthcare practitioners or all clinical areas. However there are a number of common areas related to education for healthcare practitioners to support self-management. Education needs to be relevant to the healthcare context.
• Person centred approach – supporting self-management is a person centred approach and by definition, communication skills are central to its implementation...
• Specific skills and knowledge – given the multiple theories associated with SMS practitioners would benefit from a comprehensive set of skills rather than focusing exclusively on one model.
• Support for learning – practitioners need continued support to enable change in practice, and to maintain this change because it is easy to revert to business as usual. This requires a focus on integrated behaviour change rather than the simple acquisition of skills.
• Organisation processes and systems – practitioners need to be able to influence organisation processes and procedures, as these are some of the things that can act as either enablers or challenges to integrated self-management support. Learning therefore needs to be part of a wider process of change rather than stand alone.
• Dominant ways of thinking and doing – it is vital that education addresses the attitudes, beliefs and values of healthcare practitioners in relation to self-management. These can have a significant impact on i) how the SMS they provide is experienced by people, ii) their own engagement with education related to SMS and iii) their capacity to change practice.

Self-management can be seen as being about instilling a new way of practising which may be at odds with practitioners preferred approach and that which they feel comfortable with. The wide definitions and beliefs about what constitutes self-management mean that practitioners can believe ‘we already do that’ or it can be possible for a practitioner to believe that their practices are fully supporting and enabling self-management without this being fully reflected in their behaviours and actions. Barriers to change can be associated with lack of time and pressure to conform to traditional bio-medical aspects of the consultation..."

Read more at NHS Scotland