The Patient Activation Reference Guide is designed to provide skills and techniques to health care team members as they encourage and enable patients to assume greater control and responsibility of their health and health care. It consists of five modules that each offer insight and background on an aspect of patient activation as well as links to a wide-range of resources that assist the team in moving the patient forward on the patient activation continuum.

Activated patients have the motivation, information, skills and confidence to effectively make decisions about their health care. They are engaged in partnerships to improve their health and well-being in the context of a patient and family-centered environment and have been found to enjoy better health outcomes than patients who are less involved in their care.

Module 1: The Patient Activation Continuum

This module is designed to help you define patient activation and describe how patient activation intersects with patient and family-centered care; as well as, describe how patient activation relates to patient safety, patient experience and patient satisfaction. The module will also help you to identify strategies to improve activation and identify resources to support implementation.

Module 2: Shared Decision Making

This module is designed to help you define shared decision making, or SDM, discuss informed consent, review DECISION survey results, discuss unwanted practice variation in preference sensitive conditions, and lastly, review key aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that address SDM.

Module 3: Self-Management Support

This module is designed to help you define self-management support, or SMS, discuss challenges to the adoption of SMS, identify the four types of patient roles that impact the choice of self-management strategies, compare traditional education to self-management education, and discuss motivational interviewing and brief action planning.

Module 4: Decision Aids

This module is designed to help you define patient decision aids, discuss changes in the health care environment that impact patient decision-making, list five documented results of the use of decision aids, and discuss ways to implement the use of decision aids.

Module 5: Health Literacy

This module is designed to help you describe the current status of health literacy in the United States, health literacy assessment tools for organizations and patients, recommendations from the Surgeon General's Workshop and the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy, and health literacy requirements delineated in the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act of 2010. The module will also help you to discuss health literacy skills.

Description of Tools

Tools for Patients

This document contains a list of tools patients can use in patient activation. The tools are listed by category, including:

• Activation
• Communication
• Decision Aids
• Self-Management
• Shared Decision-Making

Tools for Providers and Health Care Organizations

This document contains a list of tools health care providers and health care organizations can use in patient activation. The tools are listed by category, including:

• Activation
• Communication
• Decision Aids
• Health Information Technology
• Health Literacy
• Patient Advisory Councils
• PFCC
• Self-Management
• Shared Decision-Making

Contact the Patient Safety Program team to request toolkit