Co-Creating Care

Overview

The Co-Creating Care Initiative aims to deliver lasting improvements in the ability of primary health care teams to manage people with a chronic condition by making their care more ‘patient centred’.

Brisbane South Division is delivering this program in collaboration with Client-Focused Evaluations Program (CFEP) introducing an evidenced-based intervention based on the successful UK Health Foundation’s Co-Creating Health Initiative.

It is a true investment in a clinician’s own professional progression as well as that of practices. The program recognises the difficulties in the modern health system and the care required for chronic condition patients within the system. It seeks to aid the efficiency of consultations and deliver a more enriching experience for both clinician and patient.

The two elements of the initiative are – The Advanced Development Program and Service Re-Design . Both are driven by the patient’s experience of care and will demonstrate improvement from the patient’s perspective.

The Advanced Development Program

The Advanced Development Program (ADP) is building the capacity of the workforce by focusing on a menu of specific techniques that have been demonstrated to support self-management and improve patient confidence to self manage.
The program is designed to enable clinicians to acquire and strengthen these skills. Evidence shows, that effective ways of managing chronic conditions need to be co-created through the combined expertise of patients and their clinicians over the long term through collaboration, conversation and shared problem solving.

Four by 3 hour workshops explore key components that exist in partnership-focused relationships including:

Exploration – inviting patients to contribute their beliefs, knowledge and values to the management of their condition
Planning – collaborating with the patient on the goals of treatment and action steps that will contribute to supporting the patient on their journey of self management
Follow-up – supporting patient self management by arranging to learn from the results of an action plan
Problem Solving – patient and clinician examine the challenges to self management and collaboratively identify possible solutions to try out

A key component of the program is supported by the willingness of clinicians to engage
in personal development sessions as well as utilising the Patient Partnership in Care (PPiC) pre and post questionnaire.
The PPiC, an internationally validated patient questionnaire tool asks patients to provide feedback and rate their experience of the clinician’s partnership skills and their own confidence in self management.
The feedback provides benchmarked data and enables clinicians to identify both personal strengths and areas that may require further development.

Key Benefits

Key benefits to clinicians include:

Individually tailored program with collaboration between facilitator and clinician to develop areas identified through the patient feedback allowing clinicians to focus on learning skills relevant to their own learning goals
Strengthened skills and the knowledge to have productive interactions with patients
Enrichment of vocational desire
Exploring specific skills that can have a direct impact on the consultation time as patient’s gain confidence to self manage
Move from pushing patients to make change to working with them in partnership to achieve change and empower patients to take an active role in their care
Interactive workshop including opportunity to practice techniques with actors

Key benefits to patients include:

Improved communications, resulting in greater satisfaction from consultations
Patients feel more empowered as they are an important part of the team
Improved professional relationship with their clinician, affording a more in-depth individualised assessment, diagnosis and treatment
Improved self confidence in their ability to self manage their condition

“ As a GP working with patients living with chronic disease, we are at times frustrated by the contradiction between our patient’s apparent concerns about their health issues and their lack of involvement and motivation in self-management. The workshops are a great initiative to explore techniques to use in our consultation rooms, to help patients to work with us in managing their condition. I have already tried some of the techniques in my consultations and have had success in utilising the ‘exploring ambivalence’ technique. Thank you for a truly informative evening which was actually fun to participate in.”

Dr Maria Souris, General Practitioner, Runcorn Plaza Family Medical Practice

Service Re-Design

The Service Re-Design element of the initiative offers clinicians and practices the chance to lead the way and take on the challenge of an internationally validated, evidence-based process in service re-design.

The Service Re-Design arm delivers practice level change by engaging whole practice teams on a cycle of change to re-design the practice so that it meets the specific needs of people with a chronic condition.

The Practice Accreditation and Improvement Survey (PAIS) is utilised to provide individual clinicians and practices with structured patient feedback pre and post interpersonal skills training and service re-design workshops.

CFEP - Client-Focused Evaluations Program: www.cfepsurveys.com.au

Contact Us

Debbie Croyden
Team Leader
Email Debbie
Phone: 07 3274 1886