Moving between ideologies in self‐management support—A qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Reforms in current health policy explicitly endorse health promotion through group‐based self‐management support for people with long‐term conditions. Health promotion and traditional medicine are based on different logics. Accordingly, health professionals in health‐promoting settings demand the adoption of new practices and ways of thinking. OBJECTIVES: The objective of our study was to investigate how health professionals perceive the health‐promoting group‐based self‐management support that is politically initiated for people with long‐term conditions. DESIGN: This study had a qualitative research design that included focus group interviews and was guided by a social constructivist paradigm in which group‐based self‐management was viewed as a social construction. Different logics at play were analysed through the theoretical lens of institutional logic. Discussions among participants show frames of references seen as logics. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: We recruited health professionals from group‐based health‐promoting measures for people with type 2 diabetes in Norway. Two focus groups comprising four and six participants each were invited to discuss the practices and value of health promotion through group‐based self‐management support. RESULTS: The analysis resulted in three themes of discussion among participants that contained reflections of logics in movement. Health professionals’ discussions moved between different logics based on the importance of expert‐based knowledge on compliance and on individual lifestyle choices. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The study indicates that health promotion through self‐management support is still a field “in the making” and that professionals strive to establish new logics and practices that are not considered difficult to manage or do not contain incompatible understandings.