About the LIMBIC project

For people who experience back pain, it can be a disabling condition if it becomes chronic, and we tried to help GPs with managing back pain, by using best evidence and acknowledging psycho-social aspects and referring appropriately.

8 workshops with teams from General Practice allowed sharing of evidence about back pain and improvement knowledge, exchange of ideas, using evidence to inform improvement plans, introduction and testing of changes. All this was supported on site by an improvement facilitator and patient representatives who joined the teams  helped tailor the changes to the needs of patients.

Improvement tools included patient stories, process mapping, PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycles to identify improvement ideas which led to a range of needs emerging which included better patient information.

The difference it made

- A radical shift in understanding of the value of engaging with patients. GPs changed the way they consulted emphasising more on ‘self-management’ and less on intervention. Attitudinal shifts included recognising the value of user involvement, the benefits of shared working and interprofessional learning.

Lessons we learnt:

- Small changes can make a big difference for patients and health care teams.

- Achievement of improvements can be made possible by patient involvement, practice based support, interprofessional learning, making the effort to find the time, coupling subject knowledge and evidence with improvement knowledge.

Our message from this project

Placing patients as service users at the heart of interprofessional learning is powerful in shifting attitudes. Also, by coupling subject knowledge with improvement knowledge it is possible to improve their sense of competence and confidence for professionals.

Funding

The LIMBIC project was funded by an award from the Health Foundation Engaging with Quality in Primary Care Award scheme.