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Announcements and latest updates

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

  1. 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 26th 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.

 

  1. New toolkits

The following toolkits are now live;

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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

Gynaecological Cancer Regional Follow-up Guidelines (652)

Please report any inaccuracies or issues with this guideline using our online form

Please note that the review dates for this record reflect the date that the link was last checked and not the review date of the external document itself.

The purpose of a regional follow-up guideline is to ensure consistency of practice across the West of Scotland and the principles of any update to the follow-up guidelines must continue to ensure that management of patients after initial treatment for gynaecological malignancy are:

  • Patient-centred;
  • Aligned to recognised current best practice;
  • Equitable across the region;
  • Clinically safe and effective; and
  • Efficiently delivered.

The guidelines have been reviewed on the basis that the key aims underpinning the purpose of follow-up are to:

  • Manage and treat symptoms and complications;
  • Provide psychological and supportive care; and
  • Detect and treat recurrent disease.

Follow-up practice has to be patient centred and, ideally, supported by empirical evidence of improved outcomes and survival. In the absence of good quality evidence care should be tailored to the needs and preference of patients. The construction of appropriate follow-up guidance requires balancing perceived patient needs with effective utilisation of resources.

Effective shared care arrangements between central and local oncology teams are critical to follow-up care and all recommendations are made on the assumption that a named contact, ideally a specialist oncology nurse, is identified in each unit.

These regional guidelines are recommended by the Gynaecological Cancer MCN whose members also recognise that specific needs of individual patients may require to be met by an alternative approach and that this will be provided where necessary and documented in the patient notes.

Individual clinical trial protocols may also dictate a specific regimen of follow-up; intervals, tests and investigations. Imaging investigations should be tailored to individual patient symptoms or clinical examination findings, when recurrence is suspected.

Appendix 1 of the document provides a quick-reference summary of the guidelines.

This guideline is not intended to advise the management of patients with progressive or recurrent disease.

Resources

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Editorial Information

Last reviewed: 20/04/2022

Next review date: 20/04/2023

Author(s): Kevin Burton.

Version: 2

Approved By: West of Scotland Gynaecological Cancer MCN Advisory Board

Document Id: 652