Origins of Act Wisely

Act Wisely started life as the ‘Making Insulin Treatment Safer’ (MITS) project. Educating newly qualified doctors to treat hospitalised patients with diabetes provided us with a very good example of the complexity of clinical education. We developed educational tools, which, as we had hoped, seem to be applicable to different types of (student) clinicians learning different types of tasks. This website offers both generic versions of those tools and diabetes-specific versions.

Aims of Act Wisely

Help (student) clinicians learn to:

• Respect patients’ rights to be involved in actions that affect their health
• Work well with members of different disciplines and clinicians of different seniority
• Recognise the complexity of clinical situations and of addressing them wisely
• Make good use of other people’s wisdom and available information sources
• Decide on the wisest course of action, monitor its effects, and learn to act even more wisely if it does not work out as intended
• Build confidence, motivation, satisfaction, and self-belief

Summary of the Act Wisely story so far:

• Over 250 Case Based Discussions completed
• Health Care Professionals trained as facilitators
• All five Trusts in Northern Ireland involved
• Eight Patient Advocates trained as facilitators
• Four awards achieved for Act Wisely work

Find out more about AW:

• Why act wisely?
• Act Wisely in practice
• Involving patients
• Implementing and evaluating Act Wisely
• The Act Wisely Team
• Act Wisely Publications
• Act Wisely Document Library