The SNAP website is aimed primarily at health care professionals, but is also of interest to researchers who would like to identify areas of patient support needs.
"SNAP was originially developed for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), but health care professionals and patients who have reviewed and used the tool and experienced SNAP have suggested that SNAP is relevant for a whole range of progressive conditions beyond COPD such as heart failure, stroke, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, diabetes, frailty, cancer, and so on…" Dr Morag Farquhar.
The website provides a one-stop shop for all things “SNAP” – what SNAP is, how you can use the SNAP tool, SNAP resources, access to training in SNAP, and how to secure a licence to use the SNAP tool"
Project outline
Person-centred care is a shared approach between healthcare professionals and patients, in which patients take part in identifying and prioritising areas where they need support. It’s about involving people in their own care, to make sure their values, preferences and needs are respected. However delivering person-centred care can be difficult for health care professionals as they don’t always know what patients’ support needs are – patients can be unsure which of the concerns they have are appropriate to tell health care professionals about, and they worry about the limited time in consultations. The Support Needs Approach for Patients (SNAP) is a health care intervention designed to help patients and professionals work together to help identify, prioritise and address patients’ needs. It includes the SNAP tool – a set of evidence-based questions for patients to use to help them consider areas where they need more support – and a needs-led conversation between the patient and the health care professional, using the patient-completed tool. SNAP has the potential to bring about real improvements in the delivery of person-centred care. It could help patients and professionals work together to proactively identify and address patients’ care and support needs.
It could help patients and professionals work together to proactively identify and address patients’ care and support needs."
- Dr Morag Farquhar
The SNAP team was formed at University of Cambridge (Dr Morag Farquhar, Carole Gardener and Dr Gail Ewing) and funding was secured from the NIHR School for Primary Care Research to enable development of the evidence-based SNAP tool: this was the SNAP1 Study which involved:
- a systematic search and narrative review of the literature on patient support needs in COPD
- Gardener AC, Ewing G, Kuhn I, Farquhar M. Support needs of patients with COPD: a systematic literature search and narrative review. International Journal of COPD 2018:13 1021-1035
- https://www.dovepress.com/support-needs-of-patients-with-copd-a-systematic-literature-search-and-peer-reviewed-article-COPD
- further analysis of qualitative data from the Living with Breathlessness Study to identify patient support needs
- and a series of focus groups (to ensure we had identified the full range of support needs) involving:
- patients with advanced COPD and their informal carers
- health care professionals from primary and community care