Interaction styles of health care professionals supporting patients with chronic conditions in general hospitals towards self-management: one-year follow-up data from a brief educational intervention

ABSTRACT

Education and training have been identified as a potential way of engaging health-care professionals in patient self-management support. However, there is a need to distil what methods work best to support self-management in different settings, and consequently about which frameworks should be part of educational and training initiatives. We investigated in Ugandan health-care professionals working with patients with chronic conditions whether following a 10-h workshop on using the self-determination theory (SDT) framework resulted in higher levels of autonomy-support and structuring and lower levels of control and chaos 12 months post-workshop compared to health-care professionals who did not follow the workshop. Situations In Self-management support – HealthCare Professionals (SIS-HCP) scores from 55 health-care professionals (42.5 ± 9.2 years; 58.2% female) who followed a workshop were compared using unpaired Student’s t tests with a convenience sample of 85 health-care professionals (39.9 ± 13.0 years; 62.3% female) who did not follow the workshop. Those who followed the workshop reported higher SIS-HCP autonomy-support (Cohen’s d = 0.87, i.e. large effect) and structuring (Cohen’s d = 0.84, i.e. large effect) and lower SIS-HCP controlling (Cohen’s d = 0.64, i.e. moderate effect) and chaos (Cohen’s d = 0.71, i.e. moderate effect) than those who did not follow the workshop. Health-care professionals trained in SDT principles have one-year post-training a more supportive and structuring and a less controlling and chaotic interaction style than those who did not follow the workshop. Future research should investigate whether also self-management competencies in chronic patients can be improved via training health-care professionals.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• education
• motivation
• self-determination
• self-management

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank xxx for his assistance in the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data can be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Geolocation information

Uganda

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by xxx under Grant xxx.