Bridges research and development projects

Early integration of Bridges self-management support into usual care following traumatic brain injury: A feasibility study

Funded by a Shine award from the Health Foundation

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This was our first project to co-design self-management support with people after traumatic brain injury and achieve implementation across acute, rehabilitation and community services. New self-management support tools specific for the traumatic brain injury context have been co-designed and implemented within the acute Neurosciences and Trauma wards of a Major Trauma Centre, a Rehabilitation Unit, and in Headway, the brain injury charity, settings. We now have a new patient-held interactive book, a family and friends’ book, and a multi-disciplinary bespoke training package for supporting self-management after brain injury.

“Sometimes I think ‘I don’t want to listen anymore’. This book makes me comfortable because, when I am reading it, it is just me and the book. The stories are good, they make me feel like I don’t have to hide anything. The more I read how they had head injury, the more I can open up. I read it every day. I use the goals as well. I might forget them, but if I write them down, I know.”  19 year-old male, TBI

In 2015, 70 multidisciplinary healthcare professionals and voluntary sector workers participated in joint 3-stage training, and an additional 40 staff and managers participated in abbreviated training. Questionnaire responses demonstrated a significant difference in the levels of confidence expressed by staff regarding their knowledge and skills to support people with traumatic brain injury and their families to self-manage, following training.

Over 80 patients and their families have now used the new resources, and staff have used Bridges to motivate patients to plan and to gain ideas from others who had experienced TBI, while patients report the value of writing down thoughts and goals as record of what had been going on during a time of great disruption, in which their memory had often been impaired.

Future work will focus on sustaining and evaluating the intervention within project settings, and spreading the approach within the pan-London major trauma system.

 

To find out more about our published research