Yellow flags | Right Decisions

Announcements and latest updates

Welcome to the Right Decision Service (RDS) newsletter for August 2024.

Contingency planning for RDS outages

Following the recent RDS outages, Tactuum and the RDS team have been reviewing the learning from these incidents. We are committed to doing all we can to ensure a positive outcome by strengthening the RDS to make it fully robust and clinically resilient for the future.

We would like to invite you to a webinar on 26^th September 3-4 pm on national and local contingency planning for future RDS outages. Tactuum and the RDS team will speak about our business continuity plans and the national contingency arrangements we are putting in place. This will also be a space to share local contingency plans, ideas and existing good practice. We would also like to gather your views on who we should send communications to in the event of future outages.

I have sent a meeting request for this date to all editors – please accept or decline to indicate attendance, and please forward on to relevant contacts. You can also contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot directly to register your interest in participating.

2.National IV fluid prescribing calculator

This UK CA marked calculator is now live at https://righdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/ivfluids . It has been developed by a multiprofessional steering group of leads in IV fluids management, as part of the wider Modernising Patient Pathways Programme within the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. It aims to address a known cause of clinical error in hospital settings, and we hope it will be especially useful to the new junior doctors who started in August.

Please do spread the word about this new calculator and get in touch with any questions.

New toolkits

The following toolkits are now live;

Gender identity healthcare: adults and young people standards. (https://rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/genderidentity ) Note that this toolkit includes self-evaluation forms for each standard. A Scottish Government launch of these standards, together with the toolkit and NES educational resources, is planned for 3^rd September.
Care Inspectorate staffing method framework.
Vascular surgery pathways from the Modernising Patient Pathways Programme within the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Delivery.

Updated guidance on current and future Medical Device Regulations

We have updated and simplified this guidance within our standard operating procedures. We have clarified the guidance on how to determine whether an RDS tool is a medical device, and have provided an interactive powerpoint slideset to steer you through the process.

Guide to six stages of RDS toolkit development

We have developed a guide to support editors and toolkit leads through the process of scoping, designing, delivering, quality assuring and implementing a new RDS toolkit. We hope this will help in project planning and in building shared understanding of responsibilities throughout the full development process. The guide emphasises that the project does not end with launch of the new toolkit. Implementation, communication and evaluation are ongoing activities throughout the lifetime of the toolkit.

Training sessions for new editors (also serve as refresher sessions for existing editors) will take place on the following dates:

Thursday 5 September 1-2 pm
Wednesday 24 September 4-5 pm
Friday 27 September 12-1 pm

To book a place, please contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot, providing your name, organisation, job role, and level of experience with RDS editing (none, a little, moderate, extensive.)

7 Evaluation projects

Dr Stephen Biggart from NHS Lothian has kindly shared with us the results of a recent survey of use of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Anaesthesia toolkit. This shows that the majority of consultants are using it weekly or monthly, mainly to access clinical protocols, with a secondary purpose being education and training purposes. They tend to find information by navigating by specialty rather than keyword searching, and had some useful recommendations for future development, such as access to quick reference guidance.

We’d really appreciate you sharing any other local evaluations of RDS in this way – it all helps to build the evidence base for impact.

If you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please contact his.decisionsupport@nhs.scot If you would prefer not to receive future newsletters, please email Olivia.graham@nhs.scot and ask to be removed from the circulation list.

With kind regards

Right Decision Service team

Healthcare Improvement Scotland

ATTITUDES

Belief that a pain is potentially harmful or disabling
Belief that pain must be abolished before attempting to return to work
Expectation of increased pain with activity or work, lack of ability to predict capability
Catastrophic thinking, fearing the worst misinterpreting bodily symptoms
Belief that pain is uncontrollable
Passive Attitude to rehabilitation

BEHAVIOURS

Use of extended rest of disproportionate down time
Rescued activity level and withdrawal from AOL
Poor compliance with physical exercise, activity ,cycling
Avoidance of normal activity/substitution of lifestyle away from productive activity
Report of high intensity of pain or NAS 10/10
Poor quality of sleep since onset
High intake of alcohol or other substances since onset of pain
Smoking

COMPENSATION ISSUES

Lack of incentive to return to work
Disputes over access to benefits
History of claims due to other injuries
History of back pain with previous sickness benefits
Participation in a medico-legal claim

DISABILITY

Health Professionals sanctioning disability
Conflicting diagnosis – confusion
Unfamiliar medical language - catastrophising
Dramatisation of a problem by professional-dependency on treatment
Continued receipt of passive treatment
Expectation of quick and easy cure
Lack of satisfaction with previous Rx for back pain
Advice to change or withdraw from job.

EMOTIONS

Fear of increased pain with increased activity
Depression, loss of enjoyment
Irritability
Anxiety and heightened awareness of bodily sensations
Feeling under stress and unable to maintain sense of control
Presence of social anxiety/disinterested in social activity
Feelings of uselessness

FAMILY

Over protective spouse/partner, encouraging belief behaviours
Solicitous behaviour from spouse
Socially punitive responses by spouse
Extent to which family members support return to work
Lack of someone to talk to

WORK

History of manual work
Repetitive boring work
Previous work history, frequent job changes, stress, poor relationship with peers, boss etc
Belief that work is harmful/dangerous
Unhappy current work situation
Low educational background, socio-economical status
Heavy bio-mechanical demands of work
Lack of availability for graded return to work
Negative experience of workplace management of back pain
Absence of interest by employer

Last reviewed: 05/07/2024

Next review date: 05/07/2026

Reviewer name(s): Deena Dean.