Setting up a walking group for patients or staff

Make some decisions

• Do you want the group to be for patients or staff?
• Who will lead the group – a staff member, a PPG member, a patient or a council walking champion, or someone else?

Arrange a meeting

• Once you have decided which group will be invited for a walk, arrange a meeting with the relevant people; interested staff and/or PPG members or patients.
• Decide what training, if any, may be needed for the group leader (councils are often able to help with this) and what equipment, such as a first aid kit, will be necessary.

Seek people’s views

• How often will the walk take place? 
  1. For staff walking groups will there be a regular walk? Could it be a monthly challenge done at certain points in the year either together from the practice, or remotely eg. collectively tracking mileage when walking with their friends and family aiming to reach a certain distance? (See case study and top tip).
  2. For patients, will there be a regular walk every week or every month
• How long will it last?
• Where will you go? Will there be a variety of grades of walk? You can find local walks using the Ramblers website. Lots of information and support is available via the RCGP active practice website.

Audit patient information

For patient walking groups, IT searches can be adjusted for the population you would like to involve in a walking group. 

Search terms might include: 

• • Diabetes 

• • Blood Pressure >140/80 

• • Obesity/High BMI 

You might want to review exclusion and reasonable adjustment criteria based on the level of experience of your walk lead and who is involved in the group. Considerations may be made for: 

• Those on the Significant Mental Illness and Learning Disability registers (although physical activity is very important for these groups it is vital to consider additional needs if you are including those with disabilities) 

• Severe frailty or those at risk of falls (there could be the offer of attending with a support worker) 

• Medical Research Council Dyspnoea score (often recorded in patients with COPD) and if those with high scores (e.g. over 3) who may not be able to walk as far as part of the group. 
• Exclude patients under 18 and on the palliative care register.

(We hope to provide downloadable IT searches for EMIS & System 1 soon.  In the meantime, you could use our EMIS and SystmOne search guides to create your own or use this Ardens search. Open Prescribing and EPACT2 track prescribing data and may be another way to track the impact of your project).   

Contact patients

Send a text to patients:

Record data

Easy metrics to measure might be: 

• How many people attend the walking group each week? 

• Could there be qualitative feedback you could add to a website page? 

Study

Review the results, summarise learning, share with practice team + decide if any changes are needed to improve the process.

Decide when to re-audit again to ensure the change has lasted e.g. 2-3 months and use the Project Monitoring form to keep track.

Many practices run automatic searches at regular intervals – speak to your practice team about including this project in those searches.