Ever thought a quick chat could change someone's life? Welcome to Making Every Contact Count (MECC), an innovative approach in healthcare that turns everyday interactions into opportunities for promoting healthier lifestyles and improving musculoskeletal health.
What is Making Every Contact Count (MECC) in Healthcare?
MECC leverages the millions of daily interactions between healthcare professionals and patients to support positive lifestyle changes. Whether it’s during a routine check-up or a casual chat in the waiting room, every contact is an opportunity to offer simple, impactful health advice. It’s about using everyday moments to make a big difference, particularly in preventing chronic conditions.
How MECC Empowers Healthcare Professionals to Promote Healthier Lifestyles
For healthcare professionals, MECC provides the skills and confidence to deliver healthier lifestyle messages. It involves embedding brief, impactful conversations into routine practice to encourage patients to adopt positive behaviours. According to Public Health England, NHS England, and Health Education England (2016), MECC helps professionals signpost individuals to local services that support behaviour change.
Why Making Every Contact Count Matters in Healthcare
MECC was introduced by Public Health England in 2008 to target four major risk factors associated with non-communicable diseases: smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and poor diet. These factors are major contributors to the UK's leading causes of premature death, including cancer, heart disease, and stroke (Newton et al., 2015). By addressing these behaviours, healthcare professionals can make significant strides in preventing these conditions and saving lives.
The Role of MECC in Musculoskeletal Health
These risk factors also play a significant role in musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions. Encouraging protective behaviours like regular exercise and a balanced diet, while discouraging harmful habits such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, can prevent MSK disabilities and pain. Although there aren’t many localised evaluations of MECC within MSK services, early data shows promising outcomes, including more conversations around physical activity, smoking cessation, and weight loss (Versus Arthritis, 2019; Brace et al., 2022).
How MECC Works: Practical Implementation
MECC is designed to be seamlessly integrated into daily routines. When a risk factor is identified during patient interaction, healthcare professionals can have a brief discussion, provide education, and support the patient in making positive health changes. These conversations can be as short as 30 seconds – but they can have a long-lasting impact.
Practical Tips for Integrating MECC in Healthcare Practice
Brief Interventions: Have short, opportunistic conversations to raise health awareness and signpost to relevant services.
Extended Discussions: If time permits, extend the conversation to 5-15 minutes for more in-depth support and referrals to further interventions.
Follow-Up: Follow up on previous discussions where possible to provide ongoing encouragement and support.
For a more detailed breakdown of how to integrate MECC into your healthcare practice, check out our webinar recording on MECC implementation in musculoskeletal health. Watch the recording here.
Behaviour Change and Self-Efficacy
A key principle of MECC is empowering individuals to take control of their health by building their self-efficacy – their belief in their ability to make positive changes. Using behaviour change models like COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation – Behaviour), MECC helps to increase individuals' capacity to adopt healthier habits (Michie, van Stralen and West, 2011).
Evidence and Research on MECC
Parchment et al. (2023) conducted a systematic review on the experiences and perceptions of staff implementing MECC and its impact on service users' self-efficacy, health knowledge, and behaviours. They found that MECC facilitated exploration of patients' health behaviours and had multiple positive effects. However, no significant statistical health improvements regarding weight gain and physical activity were observed, suggesting a need for further research (Parchment et al., 2023).
The Role of First Contact Practitioners (FCP) in MECC
As First Contact Practitioners (FCPs), we often serve as the first point of contact for patients seeking healthcare advice. This places us in an ideal position to implement MECC. By incorporating brief health-promoting conversations into our daily interactions, we can significantly impact patients’ health and wellbeing.
Conclusion
Making Every Contact Count is a transformative approach that turns everyday interactions into opportunities for positive change. By embedding brief health conversations into routine practice, healthcare professionals can reduce the risk of serious diseases, improve musculoskeletal health, and empower individuals to lead healthier lives. It’s time to embrace MECC and make every contact a step towards a healthier community.
For a deeper dive into MECC’s implementation and real-world examples, don’t miss our recorded webinar here
Further Reading
Blog contribution by David Smale, First Contact Practitioner in Primary Care.
References
Brace, H., Finnegan, D., Livadas, N. and Lawless, K., 2022. MECC implementation in practice: a mixed method approach to public health interventions in MSK community services. Physiotherapy, 114, pp.e66-e67.
Michie, S., van Stralen, M.M. and West, R., 2011. The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation Science, 6(1), p.42.
Newton, J.N., et al., 2015. Changes in health in England, with analysis by English regions and areas of deprivation, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet, 386(10010), pp.2257-2274.
Parchment, A., Lawrence, W., Perry, R., Rahman, E., Townsend, N. and Wainwright, D., 2023. Making Every Contact Count and Healthy Conversation Skills as very brief or brief behaviour change interventions: a scoping review. Journal of Public Health, 31(5), pp.1017-1034.
Public Health England, NHS England and Health Education England, 2016. Making Every Contact Count: Consensus Statement. Public Health England, London. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/making-every-contact-count.pdf [Accessed 29 July 2024].
Versus Arthritis, 2019. State of musculoskeletal health 2019. Versus Arthritis, Chesterfield, UK. Available at: https://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/data-and-statistics/state-of-musculoskeletal-health-2019/ [Accessed 29 July 2024].
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