Management of Individuals with Long Term Medical Conditions

Learn about the social and political contexts of long-term conditions. Understand key conditions and how to manage them. Advance your professional skills in assessing needs, planning and managing care delivery. Help people with long-term conditions to receive the best possible care as they approach the end of their lives.

This course will help you to deliver an enhanced quality of care to your patients by deepening your understanding of the socio-economic and political context to long-term conditions, the patho-physiology related to key conditions, management and care systems, empowerment, health promotion and end-of-life care.

This area is of growing interest for a number of reasons, not least our ageing population (who will live for longer, often with a range of complex conditions). Additionally, the UK government wants the NHS to be ‘the largest and most vibrant social enterprise in the world’, according to the Department of Health’s 2010 white paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS. [retain italics] This will have far-reaching consequences: more innovative ways of delivering care are emerging in all areas of the NHS, many of them triggered by the 2008 Darzi report.

In terms of caring for individuals with long-term conditions, Lord Darzi specifically focused on improvements in care planning and partnership working. More recently, the NHS Outcomes Framework 2012/13 identified the enhancement of quality of life as a key goal on behalf of people living with long-term conditions. This involves changes of culture and behaviour, and the tackling of inequalities.

Course content

• The patho-physiology of long term-illnesses related to neurological cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, renal & blood disorders
• Theories of adult development & ageing
• The psychosocial needs of the individual & carer
• Institutional & non-institutional practice
• Pain assessment & palliative care
• Continence advice
• Nutritional assessment
• Wound management
• Inter-professional & collaborative practice
• The role of the multi-disciplinary team & single assessment
• Health promotion/health education in long-term illness

Assessment
You will be assessed on a 3,000-word critical analysis of care given to a patient with a long-term condition, as well as a reflective diary incorporating a learning contract.