This is the ninth in a series of articles from the National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research (NCEPCR) in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This series introduces sets of tools and resources designed to help your practice.
There is growing awareness of the importance of supporting patient self-management as part of a comprehensive approach to caring for people with chronic conditions. This is in part the recognition that 15 minutes with a provider every few months contributes less to patient outcomes than what the patient does every day. This month’s article describes some elements of AHRQ’s Self-Management Support Resource Library, a collection of materials and tools produced by AHRQ and others.
Dr. Janice L. Genevro
The Library’s resources also include materials from other sources. These include Helping patients help themselves: How to implement self-management support, a paper from the California Health Care Foundation. It defines self-management support (SMS), provides case studies of primary care practices that have implemented SMS, and discusses the business case for SMS. Case studies include settings such as primary care practices, behavioral health programs, and telephone consultations featuring SMS models that rely on the actions of nurses, medical assistants, community health workers (promotoras), and health coach volunteers. “Helping patients take charge of their chronic illnesses” is an article from the American Academy of Family Physicians that introduces SMS concepts, provides a rationale for patient self-management, and gives an example of how to empower patients with information. It makes a case for shifting from an acute-care model to a patient-centered care model that includes SMS.
Enhancing the patient’s ability to manage medication is important. Clearly stating medication instructions improves patient understanding and possibly reduces errors while improving adherence. Explicit and standardized prescription medicine instructions offers tested instructions to simplify complex medicine regimens by using standard time periods for administration. These instructions have also been translated into Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
How to create a pill card helps users create an easy-to-use “pill card” for anyone who has a hard time keeping track of their medicines. Step-by-step instructions, sample clip art, and suggestions for design and use will help to customize a reminder card.
The self-management resources are further supported by AHRQ’s resources to improve health literacy. These were described in more detail in the 5th article in this series (January 2018). In brief, these resources include The Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit–2nd edition and its companion guide, Implementing the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit: Practical Ideas for Primary Care Practices. In addition, the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool features a systematic method to evaluate and compare how understandable and actionable patient education materials are.