Week 22: Health Risk Behaviour

This week we finally touched on the topic of ‘why do people conduct behaviours that are harmful to their health despite knowing the risks’ and attempted to apply this knowledge to Motivation Interviewing (MI) among our peers.

I found the concept of health (be it of risk or enhancing) behaviour being fluid and a long-term process very interesting and motivating, as this certainly shed some light into the importance of our role as community pharmacists in counselling and consultations with patients whether or not they are motivated to make a change to improve their health. In fact, almost everyone does so, by distorting the chance of real risk and becoming ambivalent. By understanding this, I will be able to be as compassionate that is not just blinded by emotions but a supported understanding of the natural psychological processes patients go through to make them the individual we meet in the consultation room. This concept echoed with last week’s learning that all behaviours are products of logical process of the individual, whether or not he/she is aware of it.

I am planning to complete the BMJ learning module in MI, which I believe will be of great help in engaging the uptake of enhanced and advanced services of the branch of community pharmacy I will be working in. Not only will I be rewarded with the satisfaction of helping a patient but there will be an increased revenue for my branch and company for further improvement of our services.

Week 21: Adherence, Health Cognition and Behaviour Change Models

The term ‘health cognition’ led on from last week’s topic on patient’s perception of their own health and how this affected their motivation to seek medical advice. Having spoken to our patients, I felt the three models of health cognition can be readily mapped into the patients’ life experience. All models have their limitations in measuring human behaviour because it is indeed very complex. However these models help us as healthcare professionals and patients to come to a common ground to reinforce and reward behaviours that are a result of all human beings with the ability to process information logically. Patients should be encouraged to reflect upon their behaviour to cope with their conditions during a consultation with a healthcare professional.  

I really enjoyed speaking to expert patients face-to-face in the workshop and it was a truly humbling experience. The atmosphere was relaxed and I felt this was beneficial to my future practice to gain experience in speaking to patients in a professional yet caring manner. We explored the meaning of adherence to patients and the continuing principle throughout from first week was the compassion we have as healthcare professionals for our patients. The ability of ‘step into someone else’s shoes’ i.e. empathy should be second nature for all healthcare professionals, as patients are likely to be vulnerable physically and psychologically in the time of illness.

Week 20: Beliefs about illness and the Self Regulatory Model

This week we looked at how people’s belief about illnesses can influence their response to the condition and how this can be mapped onto the Self-Regulatory Model (SFM). From the editorial of Rheumatology I have understood that this is a thinking process that patients go through when they identify a condition and it is analogous to the scientific method used by scientists: Patients test out their perception of their conditions through their emotions and problem-focused coping efforts. Although this model has been well established, there is evidence that perceptions can be altered with consultations by healthcare professionals which highlighted the impact and role of community pharmacists in improving patient’s health. I also thought back to Andrew’s talk last week, when he emphasised the importance and differences community pharmacists could make in patient’s chronic conditions.

I was fascinated by the phenomena of Medical Student Syndrome (Disease) and what a lively demonstration of how applicable SFM is to students studying a vocational medical degree such as Medicine and Pharmacy. Upon further reading, it reconfirmed my understanding of why SFM is preferred over the health belief model (HBM) because of its address to emotional representations that is absent in HBM. The anxiety stemmed from learning about a medical condition and suspecting the development of the condition studied is very similar to the process patient go through as they self-diagnose. This also extends to the general public, as medical information is more accessible via the Internet and the increasing number of people experiencing anxiety as they self-diagnose. I started to think about if I encounter a patient in the future experiencing a certain condition and how I could counsel them as they already have self-diagnosed.  I am hoping to get more practice in the communication workshops in the SimMan module with medical actors.