Focus on the hidden issues of chronic conditions
This edition of the Ostomy Life Study Review introduces how we constantly have to bring forward and illuminate the hidden burdens of people with chronic conditions and encourage behavioural changes through improved training and support. Often, the struggle to manage a chronic condition leads to people hiding and accepting problems that could have been solved by an expert. Managing a challenging ostomy can become a habit, a burden that is just considered “part of life” with an ostomy, affecting people’s quality of life.
The new Ostomy Life Study puts focus on different peristomal body profiles
The basis of this review is the Ostomy Life Study 20161, conducted to understand the challenges of people’s peristomal body profiles and the challenges that they are dealing with in their everyday life. In 2014 Coloplast conducted the first Ostomy Life Study, published in the Gastrointestinal Nursing2.
The Body Profile Terminology helps improve understanding and knowledge sharing
The Body Profile Terminology (see p. 7) can provide a common platform for knowledge sharing on treatment and leakage prevention2, because it helps standardise the description of peristomal areas under the umbrella of the three overall categories: ‘Regular’ – ‘Inward’ – ‘Outward’. This can support the expert intervention: In providing the right training, the right products and the right education. But any intervention means a change in habits, sometimes a radical change. And daily habits are powerful. In fact, daily habits may be the most powerful of all behaviours. Understanding the psychology of long-term behavior change is key – and we hope this edition of the Ostomy Life Study Review will inspire you to once again consider the varied needs of the individual - and how you can help them adapt to their change in conditions.
A note from the co-editors
The Ostomy Life Study Review represents an ambition to gather and share new insights about how people live with their ostomy. In the Global Coloplast Ostomy Forum we find this project to be incredibly important. And we must take these insights very seriously, as we lack information on how people manage their ostomy after they leave our care. Data and insights like the ones presented in the Ostomy Life Study Review increases the knowledge of how to recognise individual needs and find appropriate solutions and guidance based on that knowledge.
What we find unique and important about the Ostomy Life Study is that we learn more from the perspective of the patients, which helps us get a much better understanding of the high impact that leakage and other complications can have on people’s quality of life. And finally, it directly shows how our work influences the everyday life of people with chronic conditions – and how we can help them even better.
– Global Coloplast Ostomy Forum
The Global Coloplast Ostomy Forum group consists of 13 ostomy care nurses from 9 different countries with many years of experience and a high level of expertise within ostomy care.