Patients' Progress and Confidence Addressing Root Causes of Poor Health in Primary Care.

Context: Patients with multiple chronic conditions (MCC) may have unmet behavioral, mental, and social needs which can be difficult to address in primary care. Care planning provides a framework for patients to be screened, collaborate on a care plan, and access a patient navigator who can support them achieving their personal health goals. Objective: To compare patients' progress and confidence in addressing personal care plans for different topics. Study Design and Analysis: Clinician level randomized control trial and descriptive analyses. Dataset: My Own Health Report (MOHR) study and navigator field notes. Population Studied: As part of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate a feasible approach to patient care planning, 24 clinicians from 12 practices in the Virginia Ambulatory Care Outcomes Research Network (ACORN) in the Greater Richmond metro and the Northern Virginia areas participated in a care planning intervention. 91 patients in the intervention arm received support from a patient navigator for making and working on a goal. We focused on patients with uncontrolled chronic conditions that have complex needs. Intervention/Instrument: Community-clinical linkage support and navigator field notes in My Own Health Report (MOHR). Outcome Measures: We determined confidence and progress ratings (ranked by patients on 1-10 point scale), health risk assessment responses, and care plan topics selected by patients. Results: Patients feel more confident addressing nutrition than weight loss (mean = 8.07 vs 6.31, p=0.0031). Patients tended to report better prior progress on nutrition care plans (mean = 3.80) than physical activity (mean =2.95, p=0.0024) and weight loss (mean=2.93, p=0.004). Conclusions: Helping patients create care plans on topics they feel most comfortable addressing may better address root causes of poor health associated with chronic conditions. Connecting them with a patient navigator for the short-term may have long-term benefits for patients and care teams.

A Completely Normal Conversation With a Box.

Health professional students often attend lectures equating resiliency with self-care. While self-care is vital, this graphic series suggests a dialectical tension between resiliency (as self-care) and resiliency (as group action or solidarity) and considers how actualizing and mobilizing "wellness" really is done in health professions education.

Interprofessional Active Learning for Chronic Pain: Transforming Student Learning From Recall to Application.

Chronic pain (CP) affects over 50 million Americans daily and represents a unique challenge for healthcare professionals due to its complexity. Across all health professions, only a small percentage of the curriculum is devoted to treating patients with CP. Unfortunately, much of the content is delivered passively via lecture without giving students an opportunity to practice the communication skills to effectively treat patients in the clinic. An interprofessional team of health educators identified 5 essential messages that students frequently struggle to convey to patients with CP. Those messages were based on interprofessional and profession-specific competencies to treat patients with CP from the International Association for the Study of Pain. The 5 messages highlighted the importance of (1) therapeutic alliance, (2) consistent interdisciplinary language, (3) patient prognosis, (4) evidence for pain medicine, surgery, and imaging, and (5) early referral to the interprofessional team. For each message, the team summarized relevant research supporting the importance of each individual message that could serve as a foundation for didactic content. The team then developed active learning educational activities that educators could use to have students practice the skills tied to each message. Each learning activity was designed to be delivered in an interprofessional manner.