Supporting people with long-term conditions
This has become increasingly recognised through the use of the terms 'self care' and 'self management'.
Picker Institute Europe is involved in significant research to understand whether people with long term conditions feel able and supported to manage their own health.
How we can help
Commissioners and providers of healthcare need to find out how prevalent various long term conditions are among their local populations; what kinds of support and care people with those conditions prefer; what is already available; and how services could be redesigned to be more appropriate and effective.
Picker Institute Europe can provide surveys (either postal or by telephone) and other research, such as focus groups and service mapping, that will help with all of the above.
The institute can also advise on what is known about the effectiveness of various interventions such as patient information, education and telecare, that can help to support people with long term conditions.
Self management support among older adults: the availability, impact and potential of locally based services and resources
Picker Institute Europe together with Age Concern England and the School of Pharmacy, University of London is carrying out a 30 month study to examine the experiences and expectations of older people with long term conditions, whose needs are often greater and more complex than those of other groups. It will also study the relationship between expectations and the availability of locally based support services and resources in four geographical areas.
The research includes:
- workshops
- a postal survey of older people
- in-depth interviews with older patients and carers
- in-depth interviews with local service providers
- mapping of the differences in service provision the extent of unmet need.
Commissioned by the NHS Service Delivery and Organisation Research and Development programme, this study runs in parallel with three other related research projects. They will begin reporting their findings from spring 2009.
Effectiveness of interventions to support people's health management
Picker Institute Europe has published a report 
Patients make it better that reviews worldwide evidence on what works to support people to look after their own conditions.
Managing a long term condition
On behalf of the Health Foundation Picker Institute Europe carried out a telephone survey of chronically ill patients in the UK to establish how well equipped they felt to manage their condition.
The report How engaged are people in their healthcare? describes considerable variation in terms of people's abilities to self manage their health, with people from lower socio-economic groups, those who left school at 16 and the elderly being the least able.
