EBPOM 2019 | Psychology and behavioural change

The historical focus in prehabilitation has been on exercise, how can the insights of psychology and behaviour change techniques be applied to the field? Should psychosocial outcomes and behaviour change be factored into your practice?

There's consistent evidence that anxiety around the time of diagnosis is predictive of post operative pain; depression increases the risk of chronic pain; psychological factors also impact on wound healing and functional recovery. Meanwhile low confidence and depression have been shown to effect outcomes.

How can psychological behaviour change techniques be embedded into encouragement to involve themselves in exercise training in advance of their operation?

For more on the Wesfit trial go here: http://www.wesfit.org.uk/

Presented by Chloe Grimmett, National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) post-doctoral Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow for the Macmillan Survivorship Research Group at the University of Southampton; behavioural science lead for Wessex-Fit-for Surgery (WesFit) trial, a large randomised controlled trial of physical and psychological prehabilitation prior to cancer surgery and is a member of the National Cancer Research Institute clinical studies Lifestyle and Behaviour Change Group and the NIHR Cancer and Nutrition Collaborative.