Improving support for self-management (WASP)
Using the Wessex Activation and Self-Management and Personalisation (WASP) Tool to design and implement system wide improvements in self-management support for people with long-term conditions
Principal Investigator: Professor Mari-Carmen Portillo
Team members: Professor Mari-Carmen Portillo (Professor of Long-Term Conditions, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton), Dr Hayden Kirk (Consultant Physiotherapist & Clinical Director Adults Southampton, Solent NHS Trust), Dr Chris Allen (Lecturer, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton), Stephanie Heath (WASP Clinical Lead, Royal Bournemouth & Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), Dr David Culliford (Senior Medical Statistician, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton), Dr Louise Johnson (WASP Project Manager, Royal Bournemouth & Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), Dr David Kryl (Director, Centre for Implementation Science, University of Southampton), Professor Alison Richardson (Professor of Cancer Nursing and End of Life Care, University of Southampton)
Start: 1 October 2019
Ends: 30 September 2024
Project Partners: Solent NHS Trust, Royal Bournemouth & Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICS
Lay summaryThe NHS wants to achieve better health outcomes, improved experience for patients, and more effective use of services and resources for people living with a long-term health condition. Helping people to self-manage their condition helps improve people’s health and their experience of managing the condition in everyday life. Increasing people’s knowledge, skills and confidence may help them to be more actively involved in self-management of their condition. This is sometimes referred to as ‘patient activation’.
The Wessex Activation Self-Management Programme (WASP) Self-Assessment Tool has been developed to help health teams understand where their service could do more to help people be more active in the management of their condition. The tool can be used by people who use services and people who plan, manage and deliver care and services. It asks about behaviour – WHAT people actually do, and WHY they do (or don’t do) certain things. The answers can help health teams decide how to improve their service. We have already tested the tool in several different services. Early findings show differences across health services. For example, managers reported ways in which their services helped people to be more active in the management of their condition, but frontline staff (such as nurses and doctors) and patients themselves often had different experiences of this.
The next stage is to use the tool to help teams identify aspects of support in their service that require improvement and help services to make these improvements.
We will do this by:
Assessing the services current practice in relation to self-management support, using the Wessex Self-Assessment Tool.
Providing bespoke coaching and support (over a 10-month period) to enable teams (consisting of those who fund the service, managers, frontline staff (such as doctors, nurses and physiotherapists- those who deal directly with patient) and patients themselves) to identify areas for improvement and support them to make improvements that benefit patients.
Re-assessing self-management support by repeating the WASP Self-Assessment Tool.
Several ways will be used together to decide if this works, how it works and how it can be improved. These will help us understand if this coaching and support can benefit other health services. Firstly, members of healthcare team (including those who provide funding for the service, the services managers, front line staff and patients themselves) will complete a questionnaire. At the end of the study, following the teams coaching and support, this questionnaire will be completed again by all members of the team and the answers will be compared with those provided at the beginning to see if improvements have been made. We expect 8 teams to take part in this.
In addition, a small number of teams will be observed during the coaching and support sessions and will be given the opportunity to share their experiences of the service in an interview at the start of the project, as well as of the coaching and support that they have received during an interview at the end of the project. This will help us understand how the coaching and support works and how it can be improved upon. We expect to work with 3 of the 8 teams in this part of the project.