Personal Health Planning

Helping you maintain the best quality of life with your long-term condition

Planning your care and support together

As a person with a long-term condition, you know better than anyone what it is like to live with your health condition day to day. 

Personal Health Planning helps you make the best use of the time you spend with professionals or supporters to get the right treatment, care and support for you.

Personal Health Planning is a way of working with your GP and health care team to think about:

• Understanding your long-term condition better and feeling more confident and able to look after your own health
• Helping your health care team understand what’s important to you
• Things you can do to help you live well and stay well (What you can do to look after your health)
• Anything else in your life which affects your health
• Help to build on your strengths and to support you in doing and achieving what matters to you
• Deciding together what support you need and to be as independent as possible.

What do you need to do?

The first thing to do is to think how you could be ready and prepared for your first Personal Health Planning appointment. Think about…

• What you would like to ask about?
• What matters to you?
• What do you want to get out of your appointment?

Some things you could discuss are…

• Feeling lonely
• Feeling low or stressed
• Keeping active
• Your weight
• Lack of control
• Your current care
• Your memory
• Keeping warm
• Staying steady
• Eating and drinking
• Bathing and hygiene
• Stopping smoking

A different way of working

• The practice will continue to notify you when your health check is due. This will now be in your birth month and can encompass all of your long-term conditions.
• If you’ve had a health check in the last six months we will call you during your birth month next year.
• First you will have an appointment with our Health Care Assistant to complete any checks or tests to help you monitor your condition. Your Health Care Assistant will arrange for a review appointment if necessary.
• The results from your first appointment will be sent out to you, with an explanation, within two weeks. If you have been given a review appointment, this will give you time to think about anything you’d like to discuss before meeting your GP, Practice nurse or pharmacist. At your review appointment, you will then have time to talk about what is important to you and plan your healthcare together.

There are four stages to your Personal Health Planning Review

1. 1. PREPARE:  Think about your test results and anything you want to talk about at your review. Are there things that could help you to live well and stay well?
   2. DISCUSS:  Say what is important to you, ask questions and consider the options together. You can lead the discussion.
   3. MAKE A PLAN:  Together you can agree a plan setting out what you have decided to do.
   4. REVIEW:  Review the plan with help from your GP or Practice Nurse to see how you’re getting on.