Delivering Personalised Care and Supporting People During Covid-19
4 November 2020 | Michelle Mello
Calling all community and primary care nurses! Personalised Care training is now available for you help people to live more independently, with support from their local communities.
As community and primary care nurses we’ve had first-hand experience of how COVID-19 has brought many health and care issues into sharp focus. I know that you are continuing to work hard to maintain and restore services that support people to stay as well as possible; be treated; and helped to recover both at home and in the community.
It has also highlighted the need to build personal resilience through building stronger communities and supporting people to live independently.
As nurses, we know that a one-size-fits-all health and care system cannot meet the increasing complexity of people’s needs and expectations. People want to feel listened to and understood by health and care professionals and want to be involved in decisions about their care. Evidence also continues to show that people will have better experiences and improved health and wellbeing if they can actively shape their care and support.
And many of us do try to put personalised care at the heart of our work already. However, 60% of adults still say they have never been asked about what is important to them during conversations with healthcare professionals (NHS England GP Patient Survey 2019).
Where does Personalised Care come in?
Personalised care is an approach that helps people make decisions about managing their health and wellbeing. It moves away from asking ‘what’s the matter with you’ to being asked ‘what matters to you’. It enables people to live the life they want to live, working alongside clinical information from those who support them.
The idea of personalised care isn’t new. It is a partnership approach with ‘motivational interviewing’ at its heart and includes shared decision making; care and support planning; health coaching and supported self-management.
And this is even more important at this critical moment. Community and primary care nurses are taking the core elements of personalised care to respond to the challenges presented by the pandemic. The recent QNI annual conference focused learning from the pandemic and highlighted the role of community and primary care services responding to the challenges presented by COVID- 19.
So, with all this momentum, now is the time to bring personalised care to life more than ever. Our nursing workforce need support to have the skills, confidence and knowledge to make it a reality. To be able to make these small but vital changes to our work practice so that people and teams can harness the benefits of personalised care.
The Personalised Care Institute
And that’s why the Personalised Care Institute (PCI) was launched – the national training hub in personalised care.
The PCI is a collaboration of over 40 partners – royal colleges and organisations including the QNI. It will give you access to the latest training and help you navigate the best professional development opportunities on personalised care available out there.
Key to this will be to offer a core set of skills to help you work more in partnership with people in your care using an asset-strengths based approach, as well as providing you with skills to support behaviour change.
No matter your schedule, lifestyle, and working arrangements, the PCI will help you find high quality training that fits in with your life. Whether e-learning, or face to face sessions, or a blend of the two, it can help you to develop and extend your skills in personalised care, whatever your role is.
We know how you busy you are, so the PCI will also quality-assure training. That way, whatever opportunities you chose, you can be assured that they’re worth your time.
You can also join the personalised care training community via the e-learning hub which has an open forum and all the latest webinars, updates and research to keep you connected with other like-minded professionals. You can even connect with other professionals locally.
By making small changes to your working practices, you can make a big difference to the people you work with and ultimately isn’t that why we became nurses to begin with?
Find out more, visit the PCI website, watch the animation below and join-in the conversation via @Pers_Care_Inst
Good luck!
Michelle Mello RN, QNI Fellow
Deputy Director (Clinical, Workforce & Quality), Personalised Care Group, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Email: michelle.mello@nhs.net Twitter: @MSHMello
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