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Showing results for tags 'Care goals'.
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Content ArticleResearch shows that patients who stayed registered with the same GP over many years have fewer out-of-hours appointments and acute hospital admissions, as well as a reduced risk of death. Helen Salsibury in this BMJ article discusses the benefits of continuity of care not only for the patient but also the doctor.
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News ArticleContinuity of care in general practice reduces use of out-of-hours care, acute hospitalisations and mortality, researchers have shown - as GP leaders warned staff shortages and heavy workload means it is becoming harder to deliver in the UK. Long-lasting personal continuity with a GP is 'strongly associated with reduced need for out-of-hours services, acute hospitalisations, and mortality', according to a study by researchers in Norway. An association lasting more than 15 years between a patient and a specific GP reduces the probability of any of these factors by 25-30%, the study published in the British Journal of General Practice found. The researchers said 'promoting stability among GPs' should be a priority for health authorities, and warned that continuity of care was under pressure. The findings come as general practice in the UK faces intense pressure amid a shortage of GPs and intense workload after more than 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Responding to the findings, RCGP chair Professor Martin Marshall said: "Continuity of care is highly valued by patients and GPs and our teams alike. It is what allows us to build relationships with our patients, often over time, and this study builds the strong evidence base of its benefits for patients and the NHS." Read full story Source: GP Online, 4 October 2021
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Content ArticleContinuity, usually considered a quality aspect of primary care, is under pressure in Norway, and elsewhere. An association lasting more than 15 years between a patient and a specific GP reduces the probability of any of these factors by 25-30%, a study by Sandvik et al. found. The researchers said 'promoting stability among GPs' should be a priority for health authorities, and warned that continuity of care was under pressure.
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News Article
Annual checks can lengthen life
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A group set-up following the Winterbourne View scandal is urging more people with learning disabilities to attend their annual health check-up. Healthwatch South Gloucestershire said regular health checks could prevent people from dying unnecessarily. It formed after BBC Panorama exposed abuse of patients at Winterbourne View hospital 10 years ago. Only about 36% of people with learning difficulties are believed to have an annual GP health check-up. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). said the lack of regular, medical observations contributed to them having a life expectancy of 20 years lower than in the wider population. Healthwatch South Gloucestershire, a regional, independent health and social care champion, has created a checklist to encourage more people to attend appointments to help them improve their life expectancy. Vicky Marriott from the group said: "It is our unrelenting mission to listen and share people's lived experience so that the information informs how health and social care services improve. "We recently listened to people with learning disabilities and their families and developed with them an accessible info-sheet packed full of easy-to-read explanations about the lifesaving benefits of annual health checks." Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 June 2021 -
Content ArticleRegina Hoffman, executive director of Pennsylvania’s Patient Safety Authority, explains why we sometimes need to look beyond the accepted 'best practice' and provide the best care instead.
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EventThis conference will provide a practical guide to delivering an effective prehabilitation programme, ensuring patients are fit for cancer surgery or treatment. This is even more important in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns which have had a negative effect on many individual’s health and fitness levels. The conference will look at optimisation of patients fitness and wellbeing through exercise, nutrition and psychological support. Register
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EventuntilThe NHS spends £8.3 billion a year treating chronic wounds on an estimated 3.8 million people, according to the recently updated study evaluating the “Burden of Wounds” to the NHS. Costs have increased by 48% in the five years since the study was first published and the overwhelming majority of this burgeoning demand, around 80% of the caseload, impacts on community healthcare. This webinar will explore the “Burden of Wounds” with study author Julian Guest and consider how digital wound management solutions can relieve pressure and improve outcomes. We’ll see case studies from community nurses, hear the patient and staff view through #tvn2gether and the National Wound Care Strategy team will share their long term vision. Chaired by Margaret Kitching MBE, Chief Nurse for NHS England and NHS Improvement’s North East and Yorkshire Region, this conversation brings together leading voices within wound care to discuss new strategies for 2021 and beyond. Register
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Event
Reducing variation in healthcare services
Sam posted an event in Community Calendar
untilThere are many sources of variation in healthcare that can affect the flow of patients through care systems. Reducing and managing variation enables systems to become more predictable and easier to manage so allowing improvement of quality and safety. To effect successful service improvements, you need to understand the source of variation and use a range of tools to reduce and manage it. This pandemic has provoked the best of human compassion and solidarity, but those who manage our health systems still face extraordinary challenges responding to COVID-19. Looking beyond the crisis, our collective learning about the effects of the large falls in healthcare use can help inform and intensify efforts to reduce unnecessary care. The aim of this webinar is to build a culture of collaborative working across the healthcare workforce and reduce variation to prevent avoidable harm to patients, enhance healthcare equity, and improve the sustainability of health systems everywhere. Register -
Content ArticleLast November’s HSJ Patient Safety Virtual Congress focused on the COVID-19 virtual ward model, which enables the early identification and timely management of deteriorating patients in the community - a critical step in reducing avoidable deaths from all conditions. If you missed the vital discussion, you can check it out below.
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Content Article
UCL Partners: Proactive care frameworks
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Care pathways
UCL Partners have developed a series of proactive care frameworks to restore routine care by prioritising patients at highest risk of deterioration, with pathways that mobilise the wider workforce and digital/tech, to optimise remote care and self-care, while reducing GP workload. The frameworks include atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, asthma and COPD. -
Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented morbidity, mortality and global disruption. Following the initial surge of infections, focus shifted to managing the longer-term sequelae of illness in survivors. ‘Post-acute COVID’ (also known as ‘Long COVID’) is emerging as a prevalent syndrome. It encompasses a plethora of debilitating symptoms (including breathlessness, chest pain, palpitations and orthostatic intolerance) which can last for weeks or more following mild illness. Dani et al. describe a series of individuals with symptoms of ‘Long COVID’, and posit that this condition may be related to a virus- or immune-mediated disruption of the autonomic nervous system resulting in orthostatic intolerance syndromes. They suggest that all physicians should be equipped to recognise such cases, appreciate the symptom burden and provide supportive management. They present our rationale for an underlying impaired autonomic physiology post-COVID-19 and suggest means of management.
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EventuntilIn this Westminster Health Forum event, delegates will assess the priorities for improving lung health in England. Areas for discussion include: responding to the pandemic, and the challenges of long COVID lung health in the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan optimising respiratory prescribing promoting prevention and addressing inequalities, including air quality improvement and developing healthy communities next steps for integrated respiratory care, rehabilitation and care at a local level research, innovation and priorities for service transformation. Register
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EventuntilOne of the great opportunities for ICSs may be around reducing future demand for healthcare by ensuring that people remain healthy or are helped to reduce the chances of deteriorating if they do develop an illness or long-term condition. Prevention and early intervention underlie much of the NHS Long Term Plan, with a recognition that the NHS can no longer simply be an “ill health” service and instead bends to think about prevention and reducing health inequalities. Many ICSs are keen to develop this role and bring together the organisations they represent – across both the NHS and local authorities –to work collaboratively on this. But with resources and time limited, they may need to concentrate their efforts on particular areas. The second wave of covid – and the prospect of widespread vaccination starting within weeks - has added a new dimension to this with an urgent need to reduce the pressure covid places on the NHS and on normal life in general. This webinar will ask: has covid helped focus the NHS’s eyes on prevention? where are the “easy wins” for ICSs where interventions are most likely to have significant results within a reasonable timeframe? what key steps do ICSs need to take to get the maximum benefit from these? How can they build common purpose among their members to ensure these happen? how can public health be made “business as usual” for everyone working in the NHS – including those in hospitals? how can ICSs balance the preventative interventions which deliver short-term benefits with those which take longer to offer a “return on investment”? Register
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Content ArticleThis guide will support healthcare professionals to integrate prehabilitation services into the cancer pathway.
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Content ArticleMaintaining safe elective surgical activity during the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic is challenging and it is not clear how COVID‐19 may impact peri‐operative morbidity and mortality in this population. Therefore, adaptations to normal care pathways are required. Here, Kane et al. establish if implementation of a bespoke peri‐operative care bundle for urgent elective surgery during a pandemic surge period can deliver a low COVID‐19‐associated complication profile. Kane et al. present a single‐centre retrospective cohort study from a tertiary care hospital of patients planned for urgent elective surgery during the initial COVID‐19 surge in the UK between 29 March and 12 June 2020.
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EventuntilOver the last twenty years in particular, the NHS has been focusing on how to create better care pathways that improve patient outcomes. Improving care pathways has a positive impact on clinical outcomes, cost reduction, patient satisfaction, teamwork and process outcomes, but COVID-19 has created a significant disconnect in these pathways meaning patients are either not entering them or not flowing through them as smoothly as they need to. The administrative elements of managing patients through pathways are significant and, at a time when the NHS is experiencing workforce shortages, routinely take staff away from caring for and reassuring patients. At this King's Fund event, decision points within pathways will be explored and how digital technology can transform how pathways operate, enabling clinicians to better understand where each patient is on the pathway, what they are waiting for and what needs to happen next. Learn how to improve pathway ‘hand-offs’ and administration, to free up time for staff to care for patients in a more personalised way. The event will include examples of how industry and the NHS can come together to build smarter pathways, using technology to augment the expertise of caregivers. Register for free
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Content ArticleThe Clinical Command Centre is designed to optimise many aspects of day-to-day patient care and help create better patient experiences, outcomes, and lower costs. It makes sense of vast amounts of data for hospitals and healthcare systems worldwide. Today, Command Centres are also helping these systems meet the challenge of COVID-19. Currently, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) is the only Trust in Europe equipped with this technology which is likely to be crucial in dealing with any second wave of COVID-19 cases. In this video, Mel Pickup, CEO of BTHFT, shed some light on how they've been using advanced data visualisation and the vision for using it in the future. By making sense of vast amounts of operational data, the technology is enabling leadership teams to make critical, real-time decisions about patient care.
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Content ArticleThis review explores the benefits of multidisciplinary team working to support people having surgery and the factors that may help and hinder its development and sustainability. Perioperative care is the integrated multidisciplinary care of patients from the moment surgery is contemplated through to full recovery. Multidisciplinary working, whereby professionals from different specialties and sectors work together to support someone along their journey, is a foundation of perioperative care. The Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) wanted to explore the benefits of, and barriers and enabler to, multidisciplinary team working. The rapid review summarises learning from 236 UK and international studies about this. About 13% of the studies were from the UK. To identify relevant research, 14 bibliographic databases were searched and screened more than 18,000 articles available as of June 2020.
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Content Article
Pressure Ulcer Path: prevent and treat step by step
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Pressure ulcers
Research has shown that frontline staff understand the dangers of pressure sores but experience significant challenges in their attempts to prevent them. The research, undertaken by NHS Midlands and East and downloadable below, showed that staff feel they do not have the time to treat patients and need improved communication between the patients, their carers and the homes from which they might have come. In response to this, NHS Midlands and East has created the Pressure Ulcer Path, a tool to support staff in preventing pressure ulcers and treating them, alongside a number of useful resources. -
Content Article
Supporting patients who are resistant to mouth care
Claire Cox posted an article in By health and care staff
Mouth Care Matters have launched a video – Supporting Patients in Hospital Who Are Resistant to Mouth Care. As part of their work with trusts in England, care resistant behaviour was the number one barrier to providing mouth care. They have developed a video is to explain why a patient may be resistant towards mouth care, and some ways that may help manage this. This video is aimed at all healthcare professionals. Covering techniques, use of distraction and products, we hope after watching this video you will have picked up many new tips towards delivering better care, to a patient who may at first be resistant to mouth care. -
Content ArticleThis article from Petriceks and Schwartz, published in Palliative & Supportive Care, describes a four-element approach centered on Goals, Options, Opinions and Documentation that serves as an effective structure for clinicians to have conversations with patients and families to address care management when the path forward is unclear.
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Content ArticleSteve Turner and colleagues have been working on ways to put people in charge of their own healthcare. Nowhere is this more important than for people with a variety of conditions or illnesses. Their approach involves people attending a group session on medicines, and then having the option of reviewing their medicines individually in a 3/4-hour session with two health professionals (e.g. a prescriber and a pharmacist). They provide people with their own notes in the form of a written action plan, which they can share with clinicians. Benefits identified to date include improved adherence with medicines; improved quality of life; reduced unnecessary medicines; identification and actions on previously unreported patient safety issues; a potential reduction in ‘bouncing’ referrals, less missing information and fewer unnecessary contacts with services. Steve explains more about Patient Led Clinical Education© and Patient Led Clinical Medicines Review™ in this blog.
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Content Article
NHS Education for Scotland: Force field analysis
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Quality Improvement
Force Field Analysis was created by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s. He used it in his work as a social Psychologist. In the modern world, it is used for making and communicating decisions about whether to go ahead with a change or not. It frames problems in terms of factors or pressures that support the status quo (restraining forces) and those pressures that support change in the desired direction (driving forces). The driving forces must be strengthened or the resisting forces weakened for the change to take effect. A factor can be people, resources, attitudes, traditions, regulations, values, needs, desires, etc. As a tool for managing change, Force Field Analysis helps identify those factors that must be addressed and monitored if change is to be successful. It can be difficult for teams to make decisions about testing new ideas especially when there are a variety of opinions. Force Field Analysis provides a structured approach to decision making which helps teams to consider the forces that are driving the change and those that resist the change. -
News Article
Ministers to set up ‘dedicated team’ to aid NHS recovery
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The government said it will set up ‘dedicated team’ to look for innovative ways for the NHS to continue treating people for coronavirus, while also providing care for non-covid health issues. In its pandemic recovery strategy published today, the government also said step-down and community care will be “bolstered” to support earlier discharge from acute hospitals. The 60-page document contained little new information about plans for NHS services, but said: “The government will seek innovative operating models for the UK’s health and care settings, to strengthen them for the long term and make them safer for patients and staff in a world where COVID-19 continues to be a risk. “For example, this might include using more telemedicine and remote monitoring to give patients hospital-level care from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Capacity in community care and step-down services will also be bolstered, to help ensure patients can be discharged from acute hospitals at the right time for them". To this end, the government will establish a dedicated team to see how the NHS and health infrastructure can be supported for the COVID-19 recovery process and thereafter. Read full story Source: 12 May 2020 -
Content Article
My role as a lead therapist for eating disorders
Dr Joanna Silver posted an article in Stories from the front line
Dr Joanna Silver describes her role working with adults and children with eating disorders. An important part of her role is to work closely work with the multidisciplinary team and other health professionals to make sure the complexities of treating people with eating disorders and related conditions are understood and to ensure the patient is kept safe.
