Especially for National Self-Care Week (18 – 24 November), an early deep dive into self-care research by the Self-Care Forum and Imperial College London’s SCARU (Self-Care Academic Research Unit) reveals one of the major barriers to people taking better care of their own health is the lack of consistent, clear, and understandable health information. Lead author Dr Peter Smith OBE, Self-Care Forum President, concludes that such information is essential throughout life, starting at school age.
9 out of 10 people with symptoms of illness self-care
Other early findings from the research, called the Living Self-Care Survey which set out to investigate public and health professional knowledge, attitudes and behaviours to self-care in the UK found that most people self-cared when they have symptoms, with 49 per cent taking OTC medication, 42 per cent doing nothing and 4 per cent consulting their GP.
Disconnect between health professionals and patients when it comes to language
There were also conflicting views from health professionals and service-users with health professionals believing patients are unwilling to self-care whilst patients themselves say they already self-care and want more responsibility. There is clearly a disconnect here with the research commenting that people have different ideas about what self-care is and so a common language is needed for health professionals and patients to talk to each other.
Trustworthy health advice a barrier to self-care
3 out of 4 people use their smart phone to support their self-care, and while 45 per cent rely mainly on the internet for their self-care information only 42 per cent actually trusted the information they found online. The research points out that consistent, trustworthy advice which is quality assured and easily sourced is needed if we are to support people to better take care of their own health and wellbeing.
PIF Tick Recommended
To address the trustworthy issue, the research recommends all creators of health information apply for the Patient Information Forum’s PIF Tick as a quality assurance standard. The PIF Tick is a guarantee of trustworthy content and assures readers of its reliability.
Dr Pete Smith OBE comments on the research
“There have been many attempts to gain an understanding of what UK residents feel self-care is about. We now
present the early high-level findings of national research study that seeks to capture the UK voice regarding their
perception of self-care, the barriers and their behaviours, to be published soon in a scholarly journal. We intend to
collect follow-up data via the Living Self-Care Survey every 2-3 years to get an understanding of how people’s
perspectives on self-care is changing over time as the international self-care movement continues to grow”.
