Using tailored eHealth programmes to stimulate primary health care professionals’ lifestyle counselling guideline adherence - Lessons learned from the STAR project

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough individually tailored eHealth programmes have shown to be effective in changing patient and citizen health behaviours, they have so far not been applied to lifestyle counselling guideline adherence in primary health care professionals beyond our STAR project. The programme aimed to support general practice nurses adhering to national smoking cessation counselling guidelines and showed encouraging positive impacts on both nurse and patient level. ObjectiveTo identify lessons learned from our successful application of a tailored eHealth programme in primary health care. MethodsTriangulation of information from different sources collected throughout the project run time (e.g., project meetings, discussions with experts in the fields of computer tailoring, smoking cessation and professional education and interactions with general practice nurses). ResultsWe identify four lessons learned which developers and testers of tailored eHealth programmes in primary health care should consider, relating to 1) Choosing outcome measures, 2) Measuring outcomes, 3) Practical feedback application & Programme accessibility, and 4) Programme interaction. Practice implicationsWe share this information in the hope that we will see more applications of this promising intervention strategy – that can build on our work – in the future.