Making Every Contact Count and Self Management Support curriculum

The number of people with chronic diseases is increasing. This puts extra pressure on an already busy healthcare system, making it challenging to provide care to everyone who needs it.

Implementation of Making Every Contact Count (MECC) and Self Management Support (SMS) curricula

A special training curriculum was created in 2018 for healthcare students in Ireland. This training aims to ensure that healthcare workers give the best care to chronic disease patients. It was created by the HSE and staff from Higher Education Institutes (HEI) across Ireland.

The training has 2 parts:

Every HEI in Ireland received the curriculum, along with teaching resources to help with the delivery of the curriculum.

MECC and SMS project

The National Collaborative Group (NCG) was created to support the MECC and SMS curricula. It promotes implementing these programmes in HEIs in Ireland.

The NCG is now running a project to study how the MECC and SMS curricula is being implemented. This is being led by Professor Deirdre Connolly from Trinity College Dublin - tcd.ie.

The project will:

examine how HEIs are using the curriculum
find what helps or prevents implementation
find ways for healthcare students to apply their learning during their clinical practice education periods

HSE MECC Mobilisers and SMS coordinators will join the project to help the study team.

The project team hopes that the findings from this project will support continued implementation of this national curriculum. This will make sure future healthcare workers are skilled and confident in using proven methods to prevent and manage chronic diseases, which will improve the quality of life for people living with chronic diseases.