Lifestyle Risk Factor Management - Lifescripts
The Lifescripts initiative centres around tools and resources designed to assist GPs and Practice staff assist patients to make healthlier lifestyle choices. Seven out of ten presentations to general practice are attributed to chronic disease. Behavioural factors such as smoking, nutrition, alcohol intake, physical activity and weight play a significant role in overall disease burden and it's impact on physical, social and economic wellbeing.
Lifescripts is a program which has been developed to address these behavioural factors and ensure that GPs and Practice Nurses have the skills and resources to support patients in modifying risk factors. Lifescripts has grown out of the Smoking, Nutrition, Alcohol and Physical activity (SNAP) initiative and is not a stand alone project; rather it has been designed to be incorporated into existing activities.
A Lifescripts Resource Kit has been developed to make it easier for GPs and their Practice to manage lifestyle-related risk factors by providing a framework for:
- raising and discussing lifestyle risk factors with patients
- advice in the form of a written script and asscoiated pateint education
- referral to other providers to support healthy lifestyle
The kit focuses on five behavioural risk factor areas of smoking, nutrition, physical activity, alcohol and weight management. It contains a range of resources including:
- Consumer resources - includes posters for Practice waiting rooms, flyers and checklists to inform patients about the initiative and provide them with an opportunity to identify to their GP if they wish to discuss lifestyle risk issues. Separate indigenous specific posters and flyers have been developed to provide a more culturally targeted message for interested Practices and Aboriginal Medical Services.
- Practitioner resources - "Lifescripts script pads" - five different script pads addressing smoking, alcohol consumption, nutrition, physical activity and weight management on which lifestyle advice tailored to each patient's needs can be written. The pads can also be used to refer pateints to other services, where available, to further support healthy lifestyle choices. In conjunction with the script pads, assessment tools and guidelines for each risk factor are provided, along with key articles and evidence supporting the links between risk factors and disease.
- A Practice Implementation Manual.
An educational CDRom is also available which includes a training module on motivational interviewing.
Pregnancy Lifescripts Kit
Pregnancy Lifescripts aim to support practitioners in providing women who are considering pregnancy, pregnant, or breast feeding, with consistent, structured lifestyle advice in the areas of smoking, alcohol or nutrition.
If you would like an initial Lifescripts Practice kit, Lifescripts Resource kit, or Pregnancy Lifescripts kit, please contact Jennie Sadler at the Division on ph 4365 2294.
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