THE University of Stirling has launched two free web-based resources to help allied health professionals measure their impact on patients’ lives.
Jacqui Lunday, Chief Health Professions Officer at the Scottish government, launched The Framework for Measuring Impact at the Agents of Change in Health and Social Care conference in Edinburgh on 5 September. Her cabinet colleague, Michael Matheson, Minister for Public Health, launched the Care Measure Website in his closing address.
Allied health professionals support people of all ages in their recovery, helping them to regain movement or mobility, overcome visual problems, improve nutritional status, develop communication abilities and restore confidence in everyday living skills. This helps them to enjoy quality of life, even when faced with life-limiting conditions. There are 13 allied health profession disciplines such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians.
Stirling’s Dr Edward Duncan and Dr Jennifer Murray worked on the creation of the sites in collaboration with allied health professionals across NHS Scotland. Dr Duncan said: “Clearly, measuring and reporting the difference that allied health professionals make to peoples’ lives has always been challenging. But it has never been more important for therapists to demonstrate the impact of their practice.
“Therapists tell researchers that they find it hard to find, select and use the most appropriate outcome measure for their clinical specialism. It is clear that they do not maximise opportunities to communicate the substantial differences they make to patients’ lives, and the efficiencies their services make are not as well reported as they could be.”
The Framework for Measuring Impact is a user-friendly evidence-based framework to help allied health professionals, and others, to measure and report the impact of their work. The Framework for Measuring Impact can be found at www.measuringimpact.org
The Care Measure website is an extension of the Framework website, providing an excellent way of analysing and reporting how patient-centred a practitioner’s interactions actually are. To date, the website has data on over 42,000 patient responses from over 950 practitioners. New data is continually being entered from practitioners within Scotland, the UK and internationally. The Care Measure Website can be found at www.caremeasure.org
Both websites were funded by the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate.
ENDS
For further information contact Patricia Hess at pr@stir.ac.uk or on 01786 466 687
Notes for editors
Dr Edward Duncan and Dr Jennifer Murray are members of the Nursing Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit, based at the University of Stirling and funded by the Scottish Government’s Health Directorates and the Chief Scientist Office.
MEDIA RELEASE posted by the University of Stirling. You too can post media releases on www.allmediascotland. For more information, email here. And do feel free to follow www.twitter.com/allEducationPR.
Contact: Patricia Hess
Phone: 01786466687
Email: pr@stir.ac.uk
Website: http://www.stir.ac.uk
