Specialist Learning Disability Services | Right Decisions

Right Decisions
Digital on demand
Impact content
Back
Human Impact Stories
Specialist Learning Disability Services

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

Picture of a young lady sitting at a laptop with headphones

Human impact story perspective: citizen, patient

Marie is a young lady with a learning disability who was living at home with her mother when the pandemic began. She lost all of her social activities and was terrified of dying from COVID-19. Marie had been due to move into her own supported accommodation before the pandemic. This had to be put on hold, but she didn’t understand why, and blamed herself. Marie became increasingly anxious and low in mood, and by the time her mother contacted Specialist Learning Disability Services, she was not sleeping or leaving the house.

Marie was diagnosed with clinical depression and started treatment. Because Marie had Down syndrome, she was at high clinical risk from COVID-19 and that meant that every face-to-face contact put her at risk. Marie found it hard to express how she was feeling on the telephone, it was not possible to offer assessment or support by telephone.

After an initial face to face visit Marie, her mother and the Learning Disability Team were set up to use NearMe video consultation. This worked really well for Marie. She was comfortable talking over video consultation and the healthcare professional was also able to assess her mental health. Appointments were arranged via email with Marie’s mother, and the healthcare professional was able to coordinate times that worked around both of their diaries.

As the pandemic progressed, video consultation was gradually augmented by increased face to face contact with Marie, but the patient’s mother still found it easier to meet using video consultation. Marie was finally able to move into her own new home, and Microsoft Teams video was used to conduct multidisciplinary meetings between Marie, her mother, Psychiatry, Learning Disability Nursing, Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Social Services and her new support team. Marie is now on long term treatment and is no longer feeling depressed and anxious. Marie remains under review by the Learning Disability health team, and they are choosing to use a combination of video consultation, email and face-to-face contact.