In order to maintain healthy lives, people with chronic conditions and their families undertake day-to-day activities to manage their condition. This management often involves understanding and following complex medical regimens, and challenging changes in lifestyle, such as weight loss or increasing exercise. These activities, called self-management, involve three different kinds of tasks: care of the body and management of the condition, adapting everyday activities and roles to the condition, and dealing with the emotions arising from having the condition. Self-management support is the care and encouragement provided to people with chronic conditions to help them understand their central role in managing their illness, make informed decisions about care, and engage in healthy behaviors.
Good self-management support involves collaboration between patient and their care provider, one in which the provider is a coach as well as clinician and the patient and family are managers of daily care. Through collaboration patients, family, and providers share information, understand a patient’s goals, and create a plan that all can use to guide care at home and in the clinical setting. Health care systems can support effective self-management by providing care that builds patient and family skills and confidence, increases patient and family knowledge about the condition, increases provider’s knowledge of the needs and preferences of the patient, and supports the patient and family in the psychosocial, as well as medical, responses to the condition.
Providing self-management support is a big challenge to providers and health care systems. IHI, with funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is working to create state-of-the-art self-management support interventions at the practice, health care system, and community levels.
