Tailoring Tools

People want to have choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered, based on ’what matters’ to them and their individual strengths, needs and preferences.

Self-management is the usual care for people living with long-term conditions. Although they tend to spend relatively little time in contact with the health and care system, more than four in ten people living with a long-term condition do not have the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their health and wellbeing daily. As a result, they often have a lower quality of life and make more use of primary care and emergency services than those who are more knowledgeable, skilled and confident. Tailoring tools can improve people’s ability to self-manage, so it follows that we should measure knowledge, skills and confidence by using them. Patient Activation Measure® (PAM®) is one example of a tailoring tool and provides tailored interventions to improve activation for those who would most benefit. The LCHS Community Cardiac Rehab team started to use PAM in 2020. They have reported that since moving to this way of working they have seen outcomes improve for the people they support and it has changed the way their service is run.

In this video, Amanda Griffiths, Cardiac Rehab Nurse Specialist Team Lead working for LCHS, talks more about PAM.

The Health Systems Support Framework is a tailoring tool ‘supermarket’ that launched on 23rd June 2021, where health organisations and systems can now procure tailoring tools. There will be over 200 accredited suppliers on the framework. In Lincolnshire we are looking to procure two or three tailoring tools for all services to use. This will hopefully happen winter 2021.

Tailoring tools can improve a person’s ability to self-manage. They should be used hand in hand with approaches which include:

• health coaching – helping people gain and use the knowledge, skills and confidence to become active participants in their care so that they can reach their self-identified health and wellbeing goals
• self-management education – any form of formal education or training for people with long-term conditions focused on helping them to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to manage their own health care effectivel
• peer support – a range of approaches through which people with similar
• long-term conditions or health experiences support each other to better
• understand the conditions and aid recovery or self-manage