10th August 2023

Shared Decision Making in Musculoskeletal care

Alison Wilkinson and Nicola Bussey are Physiotherapists with United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) and have been working with the It's All About People Personalisation Team to experiment with the use of the Shared Decision-Making Toolkit for Hip and Knee surgery. Here's a quick progress update:

Alison: "So, a couple of months has passed already in our new role. The day-to-day work as Physios in busy outpatient departments continues, with us seeing and treating patients with various Musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions and listening to people’s journeys as they navigate the system.

“This is what sparked my enthusiasm to be involved in the It's All About People Personalisation project. Listening to patients when things have gone well and when they haven't. The differences in outcome from a person’s own perspective is fascinating - why one patient wishes they had never had their knee replaced while another wishes they had had it done years sooner but had delayed the process.

"I'm working alongside Nicola Bussey, a fellow ULHT Physio who, it turns out, is as enthusiastic as I am. Despite working for the same trust, this is the first opportunity we've had to work together and we're loving the challenge.

"So far, there have been several meetings with various system partners to get a solid understanding of what happens along the MSK pathway, and also with people receiving care themselves through co-production groups.

"Before promoting the personalised care tools and approaches, we've been supporting Matt Evans, the Personalisation Lead for MSK for the It's All About People team, to develop a staff survey. This survey aims to reveal levels of workforce confidence in personalised approaches and the decision support tools.

We use these tools in our practice and are encouraging our colleagues to try them out. We're learning what works and what needs to improve. We're also visiting First Contact Practitioners (FCPs) at GP practices, and orthopaedic clinics to see how we can make the tools really work in practice and not just feel like something else to squeeze into an already busy day.

Next up is Shared Decision-Making (SDM) 'Train the Trainer' training. This will enable us to support Lincolnshire staff to adopt Shared Decision-Making across the whole system, not just MSK. We will also use the Collaborate tool to identify if patients feel that they are having a shared decision conversation or not.

So, before too long, we will have identified needs through the survey, delivered training, and captured evaluation through Collaborate.

For our latest Shared Decision-Making training dates, visit our Learning & Development pages.

And here are some fantastic resources available to help support people and clinicians with Shared Decision-Making: