HSE ‘Tips for Self-managing your Health when living with a long-term health condition’
Every day, people living with chronic or long-term health conditions make decisions, take actions and manage a broad range of factors that contribute to their health. This is known as self-management.
Health and social care professionals within our healthcare and voluntary settings have an important role in supporting people living with chronic conditions to self-manage and become active partners in their own healthcare. Supporting self-management has been shown to improve outcomes for our service users – ranging from quality of life and clinical outcomes, to reduced healthcare utilisation including hospitalisation.
The HSE Self-management Support Coordinators have developed a resource to support people living with chronic conditions to self-manage. ‘Tips for Self-managing Your Health when living with a Long-term Health Condition’ is a practical booklet which explains self-management, its benefits and where to get more information and support. The 14 tips in the booklet cover many topics including the following:
- learning about your condition,
- getting the most from your appointments,
- medication management and the importance of keeping a medicine list,
- looking after your mental health,
- setting SMART self-management goals and action planning to achieve these goals.
There is also a section for taking notes and for storing information such as appointment letters, a medicines list or personal action plans.
The booklet is available to download here and printed copies can be ordered from your local HSE Self-management Support Coordinator. Contact details can be found here
For more information on Self-management Support, the HSE Living Well Self-management Programme and for helpful resources go to www.hse.ie/selfmanagementsupport.