Planning realistic goals
diabetes
ADVERSE EFFECTS, HYPERTENSION, DIABETES
Framing goals in small, realistic and achievable steps was essential in supporting service users to make changes. Each goal needed to be tailored to match the service user's abilities and time available to commit to action. Understanding what was important to each service user was crucial in setting goals that were realistic.Just little goals, I think, are what's important to people in a distressful situation. That's all they can handle at that time. You can't give them massive goals. (P15)Both pharmacists and service users described a process of collaborative brainstorming of ideas about how best to achieve goals. Having all the necessary information and knowledge available to assist people in identifying the most appropriate actions to meet their needs was considered significant. Pharmacists often used their professional knowledge to provide further information or searched for appropriate resources to provide to service users to help them understand their options.So, you get a lot of general advice from different people, but because [the pharmacist] had a background in psychotropic medication, they were able to actually say it will be over at this time. I trusted them, and they were right, so having that kind of faith in them and their abilities really helped me anticipate withdrawal effects and outcomes and timelines. (SU26)Pharmacists identified that it was often challenging to pinpoint realistic goals as many of the service users' issues were complex, with interacting elements and needs. For example, service users identified goals to lose weight, which could be related to several factors such as medication use, diet, exercise, or sleep. Understanding the service user's behaviours and unravelling the best course of action was often challenging. Additionally, many service users had complex physical and mental health conditions impacting their ability to achieve their goals, reinforcing the need to identify small, realistic changes.No, one in particular still has significant weight concerns, medication‐related adverse effects, comorbidities of hypertension, diabetes, and it was simply creating some momentum to substitute things like iced coffees and soft drinks … basically saying all right if we can make this one change and get something moving. So it wasn't all addressed at once, and I don't think it would have been terribly successful if we tried to solve a lot of problems in the first consult. (P2)