Ben Heyworth, Macmillan Survivorship Network Manager at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK, discusses Plan Be, an online patient held care plan. The site is designed to help people with advanced cancer become more active and take ownership of some of their care, both medical and holistic. The website has been tested with a group of sarcoma patients in a clinic in Manchester. The website is made of three parts. There is a registration and a ‘Plan Be school’ where individuals can login and access multimedia resources on how to navigate the site to its best effect. There are six different domains which include different topics, each given an approval score. Another part of the website is a ‘Plan Be schedule’ which is the active care planning section, items from the library are placed into the user’s personal Plan Be schedule, automatically creating calendar reminders. This tool acts as a way for patients to organize their time and with an overall aim to enhance patient experience. The future for Plan Be is bright, there is ongoing development and an aim to test it on a wider range of patient groups. It is very difficult to engage patients in the way that Plan Be does. There is a strong movement towards self-activation, self-management requiring a cultural change amongst professionals and patients. For many younger patients this platform is probably easier than it would be for elderly patients for whom this may be inappropriate. Nevertheless, it allows for a more holistic decision making process, empowering patients during their treatment journey. Recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), held in Brighton, UK.
