How can I manage my own symptoms of chronic disease?

How can I manage my own symptoms of chronic disease?

In this article, we will describe how you can better manage the symptoms of your chronic disease. This is called self-management.

Self-management refers to a range of things you can do to live better with your long term conditions by managing your own health more effectively. It is not just about what your doctors and nurses are doing for you – it’s part of your responsibility to help yourself.

You can become an expert in your own illnesses, having acquired the skills and knowledge to cope with them. Here are myHSN’s 10 top tips for self-management:

1. Self monitoring: Many diseases – especially ‘silent’ diseases like diabetes, CKD, cholesterol and high blood pressure – can be monitored by you, partly in your own home, and partly with the help of a practice nurse at your GPs. You can also focus on other diseases (called ‘comorbidities’) that affect the condition(s) you are trying to monitor  – e.g. your mental health can affect physical symptoms.
2. Medical record: Keep one, and keep it up-to-date. It should include your current, and previous medication and allergies. This action is an important way you can help your doctor reduce errors.
3. Knowledge: Read up on your conditions. There are a lot of good patient books and websites out there, and disease-specific charities often have useful information. Taking charge of your healthcare can also be a real confidence boost.
4. Time management: Be on time for all appointments, and expect the same from your doctors.
5. Goal setting: Set healthy goals to achieve. These could include weight loss, or stopping or reducing smoking.
6. Social support: Involve partners, friends, family, social workers and local branches of charities. They can all help.
7. Prevent relapse: Diseases can come back. Make sure you turn up for tests that may indicate a relapse is about to happen. These include blood tests (like PSA for prostate cancer), procedures (‘check cystoscopy’ for bladder cancer) and CT scans (in general), all of which can help to detect possible relapses early on.
8. Focus on mental health: Having one or more long-term conditions can affect your mental health in many ways. For example, you may be interacting less and less with your friends and loved ones, drinking alcohol more, or eating less or more. Recognising those signs early and asking for help (your GP, social prescribers, charities, or any healthcare professional you come into contact with) will make you better more quickly so you can enjoy life again.
9. Living well with long-term conditions: There are simple, inexpensive and achievable steps that will lead to a better quality of life: cut down on sugar and alcohol, eat more fresh foods, do some physical movement everyday (in your house, your garden or local park), and talk to people around you.
10. Join a patient forum: Talking to other people with similar conditions can help, because you can bounce around ideas for self-management, and relate to people in similar situations. You could even set up an activity group together.

Self management (and myHSN, we hope!) will lead to better use of the NHS, reduce your unplanned hospital admissions, and give you an improved health outcome.

Summary

We have described how you can manage the symptoms of your chronic disease. We hope it has been helpful.