Patient Self-Management

Dear Colleagues,

The prevalence of long-term conditions is increasing worldwide, accounts for most of healthcare expenditure, and has a detrimental impact on patient quality of life. The World Health Organization recognizes the significant role that patient experiences and patient self-management play in high quality healthcare, particularly for the management of long-term conditions. Current models of healthcare delivery do not meet the needs of a changing population where long-term conditions are on the rise.

Pharmacists are playing an increasingly important role in primary care and are at the forefront of delivering patient-centred interventions that promote and facilitate patient self-management. Specialist services directed towards the care of patients living with asthma, diabetes and arthritis are just a few examples. However, achieving evidence-based outcomes that enable patients to develop life-long strategies to manage symptoms, adhere to medications and communicate regularly with their health providers is often a challenge. Previous research has shown that whilst improvements in health outcomes are achievable, these are often not sustained, or have a very small impact. Increasingly, multi-disciplinary approaches involving a range of health providers are being explored.

We invite you to share both your successful and unsuccessful approaches in developing, implementing and evaluating patient self-management programs, of any variety, either in primary or tertiary care settings. We hope this Special Issue will inspire all health professionals to share their research and practices, adopt new approaches and innovate to make improvements to the health of our patients living with long-term conditions.

Prof. Lorraine Smith
Assoc. Prof. Bandana Saini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Patient self-management
• Long-term conditions
• Chronic disease
• Patient-centred care