Drug and Alcohol Support Services in the Scottish Borders | Right Decisions

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Drug and Alcohol Support Services in the Scottish Borders

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

NHS Borders

There are three direct drug and alcohol services in the Scottish Borders. All agencies accept self referrals or
direct referrals from agencies. Details of these services are below.

Please note that We Are With You and NHS Borders Addiction Service share a referral and assessment
process. If appropriate your details may be transferred between service to ensure you get the most appropriate help.

We Are With You Borders (Formerly Addaction)

tel:0800 028 6664 (Freephone)

The service provides a range of support including:

Individuals over the age of 16yrs who are concerned about their alcohol and/or drug use
Adults over 16 such as family members who are affected by someone else’s alcohol and/or drug use
Regular one to one support for people
Individualised recovery plans
Evidence based interventions
Group work
Relapse prevention Support
Harm Reduction Advice
Dry Blood Spot Testing
Take Home Naloxone
Injecting Equipment Provision (Needle Exchange)

NHS Borders Addictions Service

tel:01896 664430

The service provides a range of support including:

Support to anyone 16yrs and over with drug/alcohol dependency and physical/mental health needs
Psychological Therapies
Substitute prescribing
Access to inpatient and community detoxification
Assessment for residential rehabilitation
Take Home Naloxone

CHIMES formerly Action for Children

tel:01896 750173

The service provides a range of support including:

Young carers
Children and young people (all ages) impacted by a family member’s alcohol and /or drug use
Concerned Others
Parents with concerns about their drug/alcohol use including expectant parents

Other support available:

Mutual Aid:

Alcoholics Anonymous tel: 0800 917 650
Narcotics Anonymous tel: 0300 999 1212
Scottish Families Affected by Drugs & Alcohol tel: 08080 10 10 11

For a copy of this information in:

another language
large print
Braille
BSL DVD

tel: 01896 826000

"Information given on this site is not meant to take the place of a talk with your doctor or health worker."

Next review date: 28/02/2026

Author(s): Wayness S.

Author email(s): sandra.wayness@borders.scot.nhs.uk.

Approved By: Clinical Governance & Quality

Reviewer name(s): Wayness S.