Archive

AHP Celebration 2021

Our Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) at Newcastle Hospitals have been celebrating their many achievements in the run up to National AHP Day (Friday 14 October) by holding a series of events.

With an eclectic range of poster displays, the drop in sessions on the Freeman Hospital, RVI and Regent Point sites during the first two weeks of October highlighted the many varied and interesting roles, innovations and successes across all of Newcastle’s Therapy Services in recent times.

The posters showcase many examples of fantastic work driven by our Therapy Services strategy including:

• quality improvements
• partnership working
• Green sustainability projects
• digital innovations and improvements 
• research and involvement work over the last year
• wellbeing and mindfulness materials 

The poster presenters and identified project leads are happy to provide further detail to anyone interested and we’d be pleased to hear any feedback and ideas you might have.

For those who were unable to attend in person, we would encourage you to take some time out to review and celebrate the showcased work, and to reflect on the achievements, challenges and future ideas for your own teams.

Posters

Community e-bike project

Newcastle Hospitals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 with Newcastle upon Tyne becoming the first city in the world to see all three anchor institutions (local authority, university and healthcare provider) publicly commit to collectively fast track carbon reduction.

The trust set up a Climate Emergency Action Fund (£50,000) offering rapid, small scale funding to kick start Climate Emergency projects. One of these is the introduction of two e:bikes to be used by community based children’s physiotherapy and occupational therapy staff. Provided by Ride Electric, the bikes offer staff (advocates of rehabilitation, function and physical activity) an alternative to using cars and pedal bikes which not all staff feel confident to use, to make relatively short, planned journeys around the city. 

The scheme has proved extremely successful to date and the team will continue to roll out a pool of e:bikes as a travel option to more groups of staff at the end of the 12 month trial (Spring 2022).

For more information contact Craig Boggon by email [email protected]

‘Why moving matters’ – Digital training resource promotes importance of keeping patients active in hospital

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to losing mobility and independence whilst in hospital, losing as much as 5% muscle strength each day. Reduced physical activity has been seen to result in a large number of patients leaving hospital with a lower level of function, being readmitted within 30 days, being susceptible to falls and needing support from social care. 

Róisín Fallen-Bailey, a physiotherapist in older people’s medicine was recently awarded an NIHR Pre-doctoral Clinical Academic Fellowship (PCAF) to develop and evaluate approaches to patient activity and function decline in older adults.

She worked with colleague occupational therapist, Catherine Thomas, to develop a short animation to be shown to new starters in the trust as part of the preceptorship programme, to raise awareness of deconditioning whilst in hospital. Watch the animation ‘Why moving matters’ here.

To find out more contact Róisín Fallen-Bailey by email [email protected]

Discharge to Assess (D2A)

The ‘Discharge to Assess’ project demonstrates the importance of supporting safe and timely discharge for patients, focusing on assessment and follow up in the most appropriate environment to ensure truly patient centred care.

This involves 4 set pathways and a multi-disciplinary team approach.

To find out more contact Jen Glennie, Physiotherapy Operational Lead by email [email protected]

e-Learning Package for Care Home Staff

As the impact of COVID-19 became evident, including the cessation of face to face contact with many colleagues in the community, being able to continue to provide high quality education and training required innovative thinking. An MDT approach saw the development of an e-learning package for competency based training to empower carers to give basic interventions, allowing therapy staff to focus services towards residents in most need. 

Therapy staff collaborated with training and development colleagues to come up with specific modules for:

• Dietitians – education on malnutrition, dysphagia and dehydration
• Occupational therapists – moving and handling (including falls), seating and positioning
• Podiatry – recognising common foot problems and how to treat them, deteriorating foot problems, preventing pressure damage and basic nail care
• Speech and Language Therapy – currently under development this module is being designed to help improve the quality of referrals we receive, and care home staff’s knowledge of difficulties with swallowing (dysphagia).

For more information contact Consultant Allied Health Professional Dr Lisa Robinson by email [email protected]

Long COVID clinics rehabilitation pathway

As increasingly significant numbers of patients seen in Newcastle Hospitals’ long COVID clinics were found to need ongoing rehabilitation input and support, a dedicated referral clinic was established in therapy services for onward referral.

Many patients require ongoing support with managing fatigue and sleep issues, as well dietary, exercise and psychological advice and so a new pathway was established focussing around assessment, triage and then onward care plans which can either be multi disciplinary or more individualised.

The new pathway is currently funded until the end of March 2022 and will be constantly evaluated to understand how effective the new approach has been.

For more information please contact physiotherapy operational lead Jen Glennie at [email protected]

Optimising rehabilitation through community malnutrition screening

It is estimated that the highest levels of malnutrition are found in community settings, which has major implications both in terms of getting patients back to good health, and the associated health and social care costs.

Newcastle’s Community Nutrition and Domiciliary Physiotherapy teams worked together on an initiative to involve physiotherapists in early nutrition screening as part of their assessment, to help identify patients at risk of malnutrition. A six month pilot using an adapted malnutrition universal screening tool (MUST) showed that of the 131 patients screened, 35% needed either immediate treatment or onwards referral to a dietitian.

The pilot highlighted the importance of early nutritional screening in the community and the potential for collaborative multi disciplinary community health and social care team engagement.

New ‘hybrid’ working for speech and language therapists

The Northern and Yorkshire Cleft Lip & Palate service covers all of north England seeing hundreds of patients of all ages. Speech and language therapists have historically travelled to see children and their families either in their own home or at school, which is extremely important for babies born with cleft palate who are at high risk of developing speech problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic left the team with no choice but to change their interaction with families, from face-to-face to video consultations. Whilst initially challenging, evaluation has since showed that most parents felt comfortable with video consultations, so when face-to-face clinics recommenced the team decided to pursue a hybrid approach, offering video consultations as an alternative, where appropriate.

Following a four month period of hybrid working, the team noted that an extra 100 patient ‘contacts’ have been made compared to pre-COVID, and over 1000 less miles travelled by care. They estimate that by continuing hybrid working they will save 878 kgCO2e per annum – the equivalent of a return flight from the UK to New York – and could potentially allow them to see over 300 more patients each year, an increase of over 33%. See their poster for more detail.

Dietitians. Do they follow their own advice?

Childhood (CKD) can lead to poor growth which is associated with increased mortality, and altered psychosocial development affecting adulthood if stature issues are not resolved. Optimizing nutrition and monitoring of growth for children with CKD is therefore essential.

Prompted by the challenges and inconsistencies in the nutritional management of children with CKD, the Paediatric Renal Nutrition Taskforce (PRNT) – a group of paediatric nephrologists and dietitians – published the Assessment of nutritional status in children with kidney diseases Clinical Practice Recommendations. One of these is that wherever possible, a nutritional assessment should be completed by a trained paediatric renal dietitian.

Leila Qizalbash, lead dietitian specialising in hospital-based paediatrics decided to look into whether or not dietitians in the UK and Ireland actually do assess growth in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in line with clinical practice recommendations via a NIHR internship project. Leila’s poster ‘Do dietitians follow their own advice?’ outlines her findings and she can be contacted at [email protected]

Quality Improvement in children’s neurorehabilitation

In 2018 the Royal College of Physicians in Child Health and a multi professional development group accredited by NICE developed guidelines for the diagnosis, management and rehabilitation of young patients who have had a stroke during childhood. A comprehensive framework for early functional assessment was recommended to be put into place, including multidisciplinary assessment; child and family centred specialist rehabilitation provision; early liaison with community professionals; discharge planning and named key workers or group.

A quality improvement project to meet the goals required was established – this poster explains how aims and objectives were set, and the team’s achievements to date.

For more information contact Carrie Miller, Business Support Manager for Therapy Services at [email protected]

Pop-up Schwartz Rounds – a time for reflection

Schwartz Rounds highlight how compassion shown by staff can make all the difference to a patient’s experience of care. And in order to provide compassionate care, staff must – in turn – feel supported in their work.

Newcastle Hospitals have been holding monthly Schwartz Rounds, facilitated by clinical psychologists and other colleagues, for over 5 years. They are a structured forum where all staff, regardless of their role, can come together to discuss emotional, social and ethical aspects of working in healthcare. Pop Up Rounds are now offered to teams who may wish something specific to discuss or reflect upon, at a time that is convenient to them.

For more information you can email Sue Brown, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at [email protected] or look for Schwartz Rounds under General Information on the Intranet.

Sensory normalisation in critical care environments

Critical care based occupational therapists developed a checklist to ensure they and their colleagues are able to provide the highest care quality care, meeting all of their patients’ needs, and ensuring in particular that there is no sensory deprivation or overload which can occur in critical care settings.

Entitled ‘Have we considered…’, the checklist highlights sensory triggers in particular affecting:

• Vision
• Auditory
• Touch
• Taste
• Smell

AHP Celebrations

Our Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) at Newcastle Hospitals have been celebrating their many achievements in the run up to National AHP Day (Friday 14 October) by holding a series of events.

With an eclectic range of poster displays, the drop in sessions on the Freeman Hospital, RVI and Regent Point sites during the first two weeks of October highlighted the many varied and interesting roles, innovations and successes across all of Newcastle’s Therapy Services in recent times.

The posters showcase many examples of fantastic work driven by our Therapy Services strategy including:

• quality improvements
• partnership working
• Green sustainability projects
• digital innovations and improvements 
• research and involvement work over the last year
• wellbeing and mindfulness materials 

The poster presenters and identified project leads are happy to provide further detail to anyone interested and we’d be pleased to hear any feedback and ideas you might have.

For those who were unable to attend in person, we would encourage you to take some time out to review and celebrate the showcased work, and to reflect on the achievements, challenges and future ideas for your own teams.

Posters

Community e-bike project

Newcastle Hospitals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 with Newcastle upon Tyne becoming the first city in the world to see all three anchor institutions (local authority, university and healthcare provider) publicly commit to collectively fast track carbon reduction.

The trust set up a Climate Emergency Action Fund (£50,000) offering rapid, small scale funding to kick start Climate Emergency projects. One of these is the introduction of two e:bikes to be used by community based children’s physiotherapy and occupational therapy staff. Provided by Ride Electric, the bikes offer staff (advocates of rehabilitation, function and physical activity) an alternative to using cars and pedal bikes which not all staff feel confident to use, to make relatively short, planned journeys around the city. 

The scheme has proved extremely successful to date and the team will continue to roll out a pool of e:bikes as a travel option to more groups of staff at the end of the 12 month trial (Spring 2022).

For more information contact Craig Boggon by email [email protected]

‘Why moving matters’ – Digital training resource promotes importance of keeping patients active in hospital

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to losing mobility and independence whilst in hospital, losing as much as 5% muscle strength each day. Reduced physical activity has been seen to result in a large number of patients leaving hospital with a lower level of function, being readmitted within 30 days, being susceptible to falls and needing support from social care. 

Róisín Fallen-Bailey, a physiotherapist in older people’s medicine was recently awarded an NIHR Pre-doctoral Clinical Academic Fellowship (PCAF) to develop and evaluate approaches to patient activity and function decline in older adults.

She worked with colleague occupational therapist, Catherine Thomas, to develop a short animation to be shown to new starters in the trust as part of the preceptorship programme, to raise awareness of deconditioning whilst in hospital. Watch the animation ‘Why moving matters’ here.

To find out more contact Róisín Fallen-Bailey by email [email protected]

Discharge to Assess (D2A)

The ‘Discharge to Assess’ project demonstrates the importance of supporting safe and timely discharge for patients, focusing on assessment and follow up in the most appropriate environment to ensure truly patient centred care.

This involves 4 set pathways and a multi-disciplinary team approach.

To find out more contact Jen Glennie, Physiotherapy Operational Lead by email [email protected]

e-Learning Package for Care Home Staff

As the impact of COVID-19 became evident, including the cessation of face to face contact with many colleagues in the community, being able to continue to provide high quality education and training required innovative thinking. An MDT approach saw the development of an e-learning package for competency based training to empower carers to give basic interventions, allowing therapy staff to focus services towards residents in most need. 

Therapy staff collaborated with training and development colleagues to come up with specific modules for:

• Dietitians – education on malnutrition, dysphagia and dehydration
• Occupational therapists – moving and handling (including falls), seating and positioning
• Podiatry – recognising common foot problems and how to treat them, deteriorating foot problems, preventing pressure damage and basic nail care
• Speech and Language Therapy – currently under development this module is being designed to help improve the quality of referrals we receive, and care home staff’s knowledge of difficulties with swallowing (dysphagia).

For more information contact Consultant Allied Health Professional Dr Lisa Robinson by email [email protected]

Long COVID clinics rehabilitation pathway

As increasingly significant numbers of patients seen in Newcastle Hospitals’ long COVID clinics were found to need ongoing rehabilitation input and support, a dedicated referral clinic was established in therapy services for onward referral.

Many patients require ongoing support with managing fatigue and sleep issues, as well dietary, exercise and psychological advice and so a new pathway was established focussing around assessment, triage and then onward care plans which can either be multi disciplinary or more individualised.

The new pathway is currently funded until the end of March 2022 and will be constantly evaluated to understand how effective the new approach has been.

For more information please contact physiotherapy operational lead Jen Glennie at [email protected]

Optimising rehabilitation through community malnutrition screening

It is estimated that the highest levels of malnutrition are found in community settings, which has major implications both in terms of getting patients back to good health, and the associated health and social care costs.

Newcastle’s Community Nutrition and Domiciliary Physiotherapy teams worked together on an initiative to involve physiotherapists in early nutrition screening as part of their assessment, to help identify patients at risk of malnutrition. A six month pilot using an adapted malnutrition universal screening tool (MUST) showed that of the 131 patients screened, 35% needed either immediate treatment or onwards referral to a dietitian.

The pilot highlighted the importance of early nutritional screening in the community and the potential for collaborative multi disciplinary community health and social care team engagement.

New ‘hybrid’ working for speech and language therapists

The Northern and Yorkshire Cleft Lip & Palate service covers all of north England seeing hundreds of patients of all ages. Speech and language therapists have historically travelled to see children and their families either in their own home or at school, which is extremely important for babies born with cleft palate who are at high risk of developing speech problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic left the team with no choice but to change their interaction with families, from face-to-face to video consultations. Whilst initially challenging, evaluation has since showed that most parents felt comfortable with video consultations, so when face-to-face clinics recommenced the team decided to pursue a hybrid approach, offering video consultations as an alternative, where appropriate.

Following a four month period of hybrid working, the team noted that an extra 100 patient ‘contacts’ have been made compared to pre-COVID, and over 1000 less miles travelled by care. They estimate that by continuing hybrid working they will save 878 kgCO2e per annum – the equivalent of a return flight from the UK to New York – and could potentially allow them to see over 300 more patients each year, an increase of over 33%. See their poster for more detail.

Dietitians. Do they follow their own advice?

Childhood (CKD) can lead to poor growth which is associated with increased mortality, and altered psychosocial development affecting adulthood if stature issues are not resolved. Optimizing nutrition and monitoring of growth for children with CKD is therefore essential.

Prompted by the challenges and inconsistencies in the nutritional management of children with CKD, the Paediatric Renal Nutrition Taskforce (PRNT) – a group of paediatric nephrologists and dietitians – published the Assessment of nutritional status in children with kidney diseases Clinical Practice Recommendations. One of these is that wherever possible, a nutritional assessment should be completed by a trained paediatric renal dietitian.

Leila Qizalbash, lead dietitian specialising in hospital-based paediatrics decided to look into whether or not dietitians in the UK and Ireland actually do assess growth in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in line with clinical practice recommendations via a NIHR internship project. Leila’s poster ‘Do dietitians follow their own advice?’ outlines her findings and she can be contacted at [email protected]

Quality Improvement in children’s neurorehabilitation

In 2018 the Royal College of Physicians in Child Health and a multi professional development group accredited by NICE developed guidelines for the diagnosis, management and rehabilitation of young patients who have had a stroke during childhood. A comprehensive framework for early functional assessment was recommended to be put into place, including multidisciplinary assessment; child and family centred specialist rehabilitation provision; early liaison with community professionals; discharge planning and named key workers or group.

A quality improvement project to meet the goals required was established – this poster explains how aims and objectives were set, and the team’s achievements to date.

For more information contact Carrie Miller, Business Support Manager for Therapy Services at [email protected]

Pop-up Schwartz Rounds – a time for reflection

Schwartz Rounds highlight how compassion shown by staff can make all the difference to a patient’s experience of care. And in order to provide compassionate care, staff must – in turn – feel supported in their work.

Newcastle Hospitals have been holding monthly Schwartz Rounds, facilitated by clinical psychologists and other colleagues, for over 5 years. They are a structured forum where all staff, regardless of their role, can come together to discuss emotional, social and ethical aspects of working in healthcare. Pop Up Rounds are now offered to teams who may wish something specific to discuss or reflect upon, at a time that is convenient to them.

For more information you can email Sue Brown, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at [email protected] or look for Schwartz Rounds under General Information on the Intranet.

Sensory normalisation in critical care environments

Critical care based occupational therapists developed a checklist to ensure they and their colleagues are able to provide the highest care quality care, meeting all of their patients’ needs, and ensuring in particular that there is no sensory deprivation or overload which can occur in critical care settings.

Entitled ‘Have we considered…’, the checklist highlights sensory triggers in particular affecting:

• Vision
• Auditory
• Touch
• Taste
• Smell