This case study briefly describes how the team at Whittington Health working on the Health Foundation’s Co-creating Health programme developed a ‘confidence ruler’ that can be used in consultations to help patients articulate how confident they feel that they can achieve the changes in health behaviour they need to make to achieve the health goals they have set themselves.

The feedback from clinicians and patients on the ruler has been very positive. Patients said that using the ruler encourages them to be more honest about how they answer questions in the consultation and gives them ownership of the question that they have been asked.

The team have learnt that aids such as the confidence ruler need to be durable and widely available.