Building Competency in Diabetes Education THE ESSENTIALS

SELF-MANAGEMENT EDUCATION & SUPPORT: PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT| 11-41

Table 11. Brief Action Planning Question 1. Is there anything you would like to do for your health in the next week or two?

Purpose

Associated Skill

Eliciting a behavioural focus or goal.

1. Offering a

behavioural menu. 2. SMART planning. 3. Elicit a commitment statement. 4. Problem-solving for low confidence.

2. How confident or sure do you feel about carrying out your plan on a scale from 1 to 10 where 0 is not confident and 10 is totally confident or sure? 3. Would you like to set a specific time to check in about your plan to see how things are going?

Scaling for confidence.

Arranging accountability.

5. Follow-up skill.

Adapted from Gutnik (52)

Results from the use of BAP are encouraging where one study reported that 83% of patients made action plans during their visit and, by week three, 53% had acted on their plan (54). When BAP was used online in a self-management support program, 49% of the action plans were actually completed (53). BAP is adaptable to numerous methods of delivery whether in person, online or through web-based programming. It is also deliverable by multiple members of the interprofessional team, making this technique a valuable addition to our repertoire (52).

Teaching methods: Other issues Teaching groups vs. individuals

Providing information on diabetes often involves working with an individual or small family group. Both one-on-one and group education have been shown to be effective (36,37).