Giving opportunistic patient advice

Featured on the NHS England website, as well as a requirement of the NHS standard contract and with its own Facebook group, Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is an ‘evidence-based approach to improving people’s health and wellbeing by helping them change their behaviour’ (NHS England, 2016).

The NHS contract states under Service Condition 8.6: ‘The Provider must develop and maintain an organisational plan to ensure that Staff use every contact that they have with Service Users and the public as an opportunity to maintain or improve health and wellbeing, in accordance with the principles and using the tools comprised in Making Every Contact Count Guidance’.

This comprises a number of documents on behaviour change – everything from general approaches through adult weight management to stop smoking interventions. We’re interested in ‘behaviour change individual approaches’ – which links to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) public health guidance 49 (NICE, 2014). This document deals in detail with a wide range of individual approaches and makes a number of recommendations as to who should take action.