Patient Activation Measure: An emerging tool for patient self-management

Six applications across the patient journey

Patient activation is an individual’s knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage their health and health care. Its power stems from placing the patient as the key partner in their own care. However, it’s difficult to activate a patient without a clearer understanding of where the patient is and what we can do to support them.

And it’s not something we’ve traditionally emphasised in health care.

The patient activation measure—or PAM—is an emerging tool to help us direct and focus this work. In this brief we investigate the evidence of PAM’s efficacy and the current state of application.

This is an assessment based on the current use of the tool in health care settings—a crash course in PAM and its various applications. Our goal is to ensure our members have the most detailed and impartial evidence base on where it works and when, across six steps in the patient journey.

Download the Briefing