Vol. 7 | No. 1 | 2024
ISBAR+ a communication tool to advocate for patients

Abstract of the research

Learning to be a health practitioner requires an understanding of the impact of health and society on the health of individuals, and being able to act to address these issues. Advocacy for patients is one such action.

Effective health advocacy is a skill. One way of improving this skill is to teach a framework that structures this task. We developed a framework that structures conversations advocating for patients based on principles of good communication, person-centred care and “integrated negotiation” -ISBAR +.

ISBAR+ stands for: Intention and Inquity; Situation; Background; Alignment; Response. The Plus (+) represents following up after agreement to ensure action.

Teaching health practitioners to communicate effectively and advocate for their patients is aided by a simple and memorable framework. ISBAR + puts the patient at the centre of this process.

What is the purpose of the research?

We aimed to create a useful framework for structuring conversations advocating on behalf of patients, in a way that connected each conversation to best practices in botText Box 26, Textboxh communication and negotiation.

What did the researchers do?

We assembled a group of experts with skills in healthcare communication and effective advocacy from the health, community and business worlds.

We then reviewed the literature and iteratively built a framework that covered essential steps. We decided to base the framework on an existing communication framework for handover,“ISBAR”,that is well known to potential users.

What did the researchers find?

We identified the essential steps as being:

Intention and Inquiry: Setting an intention of curiosity, compassion and empowerment; and making inquiry into stakeholder perspectives, barriers enablers and potential solutions.

Situation: Making a brief statement of the problem.

Background: Providing the information required for a decision - facts, alternatives and opinion.

Alignment: Creating alignment of values, goals and priorities of the decision seeker, decision maker and team to act as levers.

Response : The desired outcomes and your response to the the decision

Plus (+): Follow up communication and actions.

How can the research be used?

ISBAR + is a framework for structuring advocacy conversations.

It can be used by practitioners to structure their own conversations or to evaluate conversations after the event. It can be used by educators to structure teaching this skill to health practitoners or as a framework for evaluating such conversations.

Having a common mental model of how conversations are structured is a helpful step towards promoting best practice. Research questions arising from this framework include: evaluating its feasability, acceptability, utilitly and impact. Having a framework that promotes best practice is just the beginning.