Embracing Self Care for Life – Think Kidneys embraces Self Care Week 2017
Think Kidney’s Transforming Participation in Chronic Kidney Disease Programme (TP-CKD) is embracing Self Care Week this year, which takes place 13-19 November 2017. The theme is “engaging and empowering people” and the title is “Embracing Self Care for Life”.
Self Care Week is an annual campaign to raise awareness about the benefits of self care and what people can do to take care of their health. The TP-CKD programme supports people living with Chronic Kidney Disease to build their knowledge, skills and confidence to better manage and make decisions about their own health –the two initiatives sit well together.
Throughout Self Care Week, the TP-CKD Programme will be highlighting items from their Interventions Toolkit, a tool co-produced by patients and healthcare professionals, full of interventions (from Ask 3 questions, to peer support) that are designed to help patients, family members and staff use clinical appointments more effectively and enhance engagement of patients in their own care.
Embracing self care for life is about living well and being healthy. Supporting people to self-manage their health care can:
- Improve well-being
- Improve motivation
- Improve engagement in healthy behaviours
- Have an impact on symptoms and clinical outcomes
- Change the ways in which people interact with health services
We invite patients and clinicians to try out the tools from the TP-CKD Interventions Toolkit, and hope they support people living with long term conditions to be partners in their own healthcare, having the knowledge, skills and confidence to better manage and make decisions about their own health and improve their quality of life.
For more information on self-care, the TP-CKD programme and the TP-CKD Interventions Toolkit, follow the links below:
http://www.selfcareforum.org/fact-sheets/ (Self Care Forum fact sheets)
http://www.nhs.uk/selfcare (NHS Choices)
http://antibioticguardian.com/ (Antibiotics Guardian)
https://www.thinkkidneys.nhs.uk/ckd/tools-for-change/ (TP-CKD Intervention Toolkit)