Bridges research and development projects

Self-management support to be included in the curriculum for pre-registration physiotherapy & occupational therapy students…

We are working on an exciting project to embed our approach to self-management support within the curriculum for pre-registration physiotherapy and occupational therapy students…

Increasing evidence shows that participating in an active, diverse and sustainable social network can improve and protect health and well-being (Jetten, 2014). Pre-registration courses for healthcare students tend to focus primarily on developing technical skills to provide clinical interventions that produce outcomes at the level of the individual such as; improved internal motivation, abilities and skills.

This project, with Health Education England, Kingston and St George’s University London, aims to

• ensure that students
  • deepen their understanding of enhancing health and wellbeing by using a person centred self-management approach
  • develop practical skills, enabling them to support patients to engage in meaningful and purposeful activities at individual, family and community levels
• deliver and evaluate a new way of ensuring pre-registration healthcare students have the skills, knowledge, confidence and behaviours to deliver person-centred self-management support by adapting and integrating training methods currently used widely across health and social care

This project develops a model that has the potential to be scaled across all pre-registration healthcare courses, using an emerging evidence base from Bridges Self-Management and guidance set out in Person-Centred-Approaches-Framework

Bridges Self-Management training is currently being delivered to all lecturers at St George’s University London, giving examples of how the training in self-management support can be embedded into the existing curriculum.  We have also produced a multimedia toolkit for lecturers to use - illustrating the thoughts and opinions of working therapists, patients and families – showing how implementing self-management techniques have improved their experience.  The project also offers continual support from the Bridges team to help academic staff integrate self-management principles to all aspects of their teaching.

The project team are; Dr John Hammond, Associate Professor/Head of Department of Rehabilitation - St George’s University London, Prof Fiona Jones Founder and CEO – Bridges Self-Management, Mr Richard Kain, Senior Lecturer – St George’s University London, Mr Scott Ballard-Ridley - Business and innovation Manager, Bridges Self-Management.

To discover more about the project please contact Scott:  scott@bridgesselfmanagement.org.uk