Alison Wilkinson and Nicola Bussey have been working with the Personalisation Team in order to experiment with the use of the Shared Decision Making Toolkit for Hip and Knee surgery. Here’s a little bit about what they have been up to.

Shared Decision Making in MSK

So, before we knew it a couple of months has passed in our new role. The day-to-day work as Physios in busy outpatient departments continues with us seeing and treating patients of various MSK conditions and listening to people’s journeys as they navigate the system.

Alison said “This is what sparked my enthusiasm to be involved in this project. Listening to patients when things have gone well and when it has not.  The differences in outcome from a person’s own perspective, why did that patient wish they had never had their knee replaced and why did that other patient wish they had had it done years sooner but just put it off?

I am working alongside another Physio in the trust who it turns out is as enthusiastic as me. Despite working for the same Trust this is the first opportunity we have had to work together and we are loving the challenge.”

So far, there have been several meetings with various system partners to really find out what happens along the pathway and also with patients themselves through co-production groups.

Before promoting the tools and personalised care approaches, we have been supporting Matt, the MSK Personalisation Project Manager, to develop a staff survey. The aim is to find out what confidence there is with personalised approaches and these decision support tools.

We are using the Tools in our own practice and encouraging our colleagues to try them out. We are learning what works and what needs to improve. We are also visiting First Contact Practitioners (FCPs) at GP practices and are visiting Orthopaedic clinics to see how we can make the tools really work in practice and not just feel like something else to squeeze into an already busy day. For them to be successful, we need to get this right.

Next up is Shared Decision Making trainer training. This will enable us to support Lincolnshire staff with taking this approach across the whole system, not just MSK. We are then looking at the Collaborate Tool to identify if patients feel like they are having a shared decision conversation or not.

Shortly, we will have identified needs through the survey, delivered training and captured evaluation through Collaborate.

Please check out our website for the latest training dates. Simply click here: Learning & Development :: Lincolnshire STP (itsallaboutpeople.info)

There are some fantastic resources available to help support people and clinicians with Shared Decision Making:

Clinician facing - https://youtu.be/ySauTEQWNkA

Patient facing - https://youtu.be/G5bXOFDniIA

There is also a helpful animation for people to better understand what osteoarthritis is and how to manage it. https://youtu.be/6iz78WMm-Lo

If you would like to get involved with our work, please contact Matt Evans via matthew.evans34@nhs.net