Information Leaflets for Patients, Families and Carers | Right Decisions

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Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy - SDR
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Information Leaflets for Patients, Families and Carers

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

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Information for families and carers with children who are suitable for SDR

Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) in Scotland: information for families and carers of children who are suitable for SDR surgery

This leaflet explains about what happens before, during and after the SDR operation, and also the risks and what to expect after the procedure.

Information leaflet for families and carers considering SDR

Header page of info leaflet

This leaflet explains about what you should know when considering the SDR operation, the process and assessment process also the risks and what to expect after the procedure.

Information for a child who is getting Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy surgery

Information Leaflet link for Children

This leaflet explains in child suitable language about what happens before, during and after the SDR operation and what to expect after the procedure.

Preoperative Home Exercise Programme for Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) patients

Now that your child has been selected for Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) surgery, there are some things you can do in the weeks/months leading up to admission to hospital to prepare your child for this surgery, the postoperative hospital stay and the physiotherapy programme.

The SDR surgery will reduce spasticity (muscle stiffness) in your child’s legs and there will be some associated muscle weakness in their legs immediately following surgery.

The daily programme described in this leaflet includes exercises to strengthen the muscles that will be weak, improve leg range of motion and familiarise your child with the postoperative exercise programme.

Please continue with any additional stretches and the orthotic (splint) regime that you have been doing.

If your child is unable to perform any of the exercises as described in this booklet, please do not worry. Attempt the exercises and encourage your child to maintain the positions and perform the movements to the best of their ability. This is important to familiarise your child with this type of exercise as many of the post-operative exercises will be similar or the same.

It will also help to establish the exercises into a routine. You can ask your child’s community physiotherapist for further advice if you are unsure what to do.

Last reviewed: 26/03/2024

Next review date: 31/03/2028

Author(s): Magalie MacKay.

Version: 1

Author email(s): magalie.mackay@ggc.scot.nhs.uk.

Approved By: SDR MDT Group

Reviewer name(s): Jacqueline Clark.