Health inequalities was the focus of a recent development meeting with our clinicians in Manchester.
The face-to-face session followed the wider Clinical and Care Professional Leadership event earlier in the month and highlighted the importance we place on the clinical voice in our Networks and across the wider Greater Manchester system.
These meetings have been a great opportunity to create links between the Networks.
As well as focus group discussion on ethnic minority groups, NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care chief executive Mark Fisher and chief medical director Professor Manisha Kumar took part in a Q&A and a reflective session.
There are plans to meet again in the autumn, with an agenda already being drafted-up for topics to discuss.
You can now find news and information about our Networks on LinkedIn!
Please follow us on the social media channel - search for Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Strategic Clinical Networks - and read and engage with our updates.
And if you are not following us on Twitter yet, you can keep connected with us via @GMEC_SCN.
The Network supported teams across Greater Manchester who marked Dying Matters Awareness Week 2023 with events.
Each year, people around the country use this week as a moment to encourage communities to talk about death and dying.
This year’s focus was the workplace - 57% of employees will have experienced a bereavement in the last five years (Hospice UK, 2022) and every day, more than 600 people quit work to look after older and disabled relatives (Carers UK, 2019).
The campaign said that as we spend so much of our lives at work, we shouldn’t have to hide our experiences of death and dying from our colleagues, our peers, or our bosses.
During this year’s Dying Matters week, which ran from May 8-14, many of the palliative and end of life care services across Greater Manchester got involved with innovative approaches to get people thinking and talking.
The Network set-up a special webpage to mark the week and advertised the different activities happening across Greater Manchester.
The team wants to say a huge congratulations to everyone who got involved.
Here are just some of the things that colleagues were involved with.
Tameside and Glossop (pictured above)
The teams across Tameside hosted stalls outside the hospital restaurant and main foyer to have conversations with both public and staff.
There were celebrations with the community-based services at the Stamford Unit, who were joined by Hilary Garratt, deputy chief nursing officer for NHS England
Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI), North Manchester General (NMGH) and Wythenshawe
The palliative care teams from Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI), North Manchester General (NMGH) and Wythenshawe came together to plan a series of events during Dying Matters Awareness Week. As the theme this year was centred around dying matters at work, engagement events were held on each site to open up conversations with staff and members of the public to explore thoughts and feelings on the subject.
Participants were encouraged to write their ideas on an ‘ideas cloud’ as to how best to ensure staff feel supported when experiencing a personal bereavement.
Employee health and wellbeing were on hand at NMGH to speak to staff and signpost to services available; staff from across each of the palliative care services, along with colleagues from Chaplaincy and Macmillan were also on hand to answer general queries and concerns.
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Willow Wood Hospice
At Willow Wood Hospice, there was the launch of their brand-new bereavement session, and they held a very successful internal marketplace event which linked both their internal and external services within the local community.
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Wigan and Leigh Hospice
Thirteen staff members from across the hospice and community departments took part in their Dying Matters event.
With lovely hand massages on offer for staff, they were reminded of the importance of looking after themselves and their colleagues while navigating their own losses and bereavements. They shared tips on how to maintain their own wellbeing and launched their new Wellbeing Guardians Team.
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Bury
During this year’s Dying Matters Awareness Week, some of the palliative and end of life services across Bury highlighted the need to speak and plan about death.
The palliative and end of life nursing team at Fairfield General Hospital ran a display at the Broad Oak restaurant, speaking to people about grief and death.
Angela Hulse, assistant director of nursing for palliative, end of life care, bereavement and chaplaincy, said: “This year the focus for Dying Matters Awareness Week was around encouraging communities to talk about death, dying and grief in the workplace. We also had many important conversations with staff, patients and visitors throughout the day, including people sharing their experience of bereavement, trauma, currently caring for dying loved ones and their own reluctance to discuss dying.”
The Northern Care Alliance teams also ran similar displays at Royal Salford Hospital and Royal Oldham Hospital.
Bury Hospice also supported the Bury community specialist palliative care team with a display about Dying Matters at Asda in Pilsworth.
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Dying with dementia brings unique challenges.
Read our blog from Dementia Action Week (May 15-21) that describes the support we are providing to professionals across the region through the Rules of Thumb Programme.
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‘15 Steps for Maternity’ is a toolkit published by NHS England which has been developed with Maternity Voices Partnerships (MVPs) in mind.
The toolkit aligns with the NHS priorities for maternity care as outlined in Better Births.
Led by St Mary’s Oxford Road MVP, midwives and representatives from the MVP, including commissioners and 18 service users, toured facilities and were invited to share their feedback about the environment, how it made them feel and suggestions for changes (pictured above).
Engaging with diverse communities, highlighting accessible information about where to have your baby, increasing awareness of local community and support services and making practical improvements to the maternity ward environment were just some of the changes suggested as a result of 15 Steps.
Click here to see a video clip about what happened at 15 Steps St Mary’s Oxford Road.
Click here for more information on 15 Steps.
The Network’s clinical lead, Professor Farzin Fath-Ordoubadi, gave a presentation at a recent Getting it Right First Time Webinar.
Called ‘Greater Manchester experience of providing dedicated ACS transport’, the webinar covered improving patient flow for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and brought people together to discuss the new ACS guide, based on a combination of evidence-based clinical guidance and effective practice identified through system visits.
If you missed the webinar, click this link to watch it.
The SCN cardiovascular disease prevention team is being supported by North East Commissioning Support (NECS) team to develop a cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention delivery plan.
This plan will support both national and system ambitions for CVD improvement, focusing on four key areas of improvement: hypertension, cardiac rehabilitation, heart failure and atrial fibrillation, but linking in their full pathway approach to primary and secondary prevention.
The NECS team will also be supporting the development of a GM CVD prevention toolkit, which will be available across GM to improve management and outcomes of patients with conditions such as hypertension.
This month has been May Measure Month and the Network has been involved in the campaign to encourage people to check their blood pressure.
Raised blood pressure is the number one cause of disability in Greater Manchester. It can increase your risk of experiencing a serious health problem like a heart attack, stroke or dementia. Knowing your blood pressure is the first step to doing something about it.
Go to YouTube to hear from Dr Aseem Mishra, GP and lead for cardiovascular disease prevention, about the importance of getting your blood pressure checked and healthy blood pressure.
Find more information and top tips for healthy blood pressure.
The cardiac prevention team hosted a ‘Data Hack Day’, with the agenda including what data is currently there, where the gaps are and how we go from ambition to reality in terms of CVD data.
Members of the cardiac team attended the Cardiac Rehabilitation Development Day in Birmingham (pictured above).
The meeting covered key challenges for service delivery from the updated British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation Standards and Core Components, a Q&A panel from north west representatives, as well as the views of a patient and lived experience partner.
Targeted funding submissions for 2023/24 are currently in progress in Greater Manchester.
Following the success of the ‘Your Heart Matters’ bus in August 2022, the cardiac team will be involved in running the event again, in July 2023!
The bus will provide free heart checks including blood pressure, pulse, oscillation, finger prick test (if needed) and other checks.
Thank you to Manchester Central Mosque for being involved in this and allowing us to use the location.
Living with a stroke or neurological condition can have a devasting impact on mental health and wellbeing.
The Network has worked for many years to improve access to neuropsychology and also to help upskill clinical staff in supporting patients and their families/carers in their emotional wellbeing.
The Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) Training Project got under way in April with a two-day workshop led by Dr Elisabeth Baker, clinical psychologist and ACT practitioner (see photos above).
This project aims to increase the knowledge and confidence of clinical team members to help service users manage difficult thoughts and feelings in a more flexible way by using Level 1 and 2 ACT skills. It will also help service users to move towards what is important to them, even when difficult thoughts and feelings are present, therefore reducing the barriers to rehabilitation.
The feedback for the training was very positive and attendees will be supported to introduce these new skills into their clinical practice with clinical supervision/consultation provided by the clinical neuro/psychologists in their team or by an external clinical psychologist, provided by the network, if they do not currently have a clinical psychologist in their team.
A top-up training day will be provided in November and attendees will be followed up for 12 months to assess the usefulness of the training and how well it translates into changes in clinical practice.
In early May, the network was delighted to attend a celebration of the Trafford Community Stroke and Neurorehabilitation Team.
Transformation led by the Network started in 2016 to try and improve access to specialist community services and reduce variation across the region, with much work needed to bring together Trafford’s community services.
In the last year, additional investment coupled with hard work from the team has led to the creation of a single, integrated multi-disciplinary team that is far better able to provide care in an efficient and importantly timely way to local patients and their families.
You can find out more about the Network at www.gmnisdn.org.uk or follow on Twitter @GMNISDN
The Network marked World Asthma Day on May 2.
This was an opportunity for us to share our work to create ‘asthma friendly’ schools.
Read about our pilot with seven schools in Manchester.
Do you work with children and young people with asthma? If so, you can access free online training to give you the skills and knowledge to support them.
The NHS's ambition is to reduce avoidable harm to children and young people with asthma and improve their quality of life. Providing training to people working with children and young people in different settings is essential to achieving this. Courses are available for any professionals working in primary care, secondary care, education, community and social care.
Please note that there are 4 tiers of training available. Tiers 1–3 are free. Tier 4 is aimed at specialist consultants and nurses and incurs a cost.
Find out more information and sign-up.
Hundreds of people have watched a webinar which gave the public the opportunity to ask a leading specialist questions about the latest research into long Covid.
Professor Nawar Bakerly, the Network’s respiratory clinical lead, took part in the ‘Ask the Expert’ online event organised by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Prof Bakerly is a respiratory consultant at Salford Royal Hospital, part of Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, and is leading long Covid research in Greater Manchester.
During the 60-minute webinar, he answered a combination of pre-submitted and live questions from the public.
Just some of the topics covered included diagnosis, treatments, primary care, vaccination, links to other diseases, mental health, current and future research and how to get involved in research studies.
More than 130 people joined live and hundreds more have already watched the full recording on NIHRtv, which is available to everyone on YouTube.
Prof Bakerly said: “This is the first webinar of this type that we have held and we are really grateful to the hundreds of people who signed-up to be part of this event.
“Long Covid and the research into it is a topic of great interest, particularly to the many people living with and affected by this emerging condition, and we hope this webinar has proven useful for people.”
Following the webinar, there has already been a surge in sign-ups to the NIHR initiatives Research for the Future and Be Part of Research, which allow people to register to hear about research studies they may like to take part in. Please follow the links to sign-up.
Keep an eye on NIHR’s Be Part of Research website for more Ask the Expert webinars taking place on future dates.
The Network, in partnership with pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) health care professionals in Greater Manchester, also known as the PR GM collaborative, has created a draft patient education booklet for the use of patients attending classes.
The booklet will cover areas including exercise, medication, diet, chest infections, giving up smoking, voice problems and support at home.
The document is the latest part of the campaign to improve the understanding of PR and increase referrals. It has the same branding and photos used in the campaign video and website and will be available for services in summer 2023.
The PR Greater Manchester collaborative is also currently working on developing guidance/standard practice for the use of oxygen for patients at PR classes and establishing a standard process for managing waiting lists.
The PR campaign was launched in March with a social media campaign to promote the website and resources.
It has so far reached 154,000 people with the website receiving 6,392 clicks. The best performing advert featured GP Steve Doyle from Ashworth St surgery in Rochdale (pictured above).
The Network marked Diabetes Awareness Week 2023 with a series of social media posts which were distributed by health and social care organisations across Greater Manchester.
The annual national awareness campaign, which runs from May 22-29, encourages people to check their risk and promotes the Healthier You diabetes prevention programme, which has its delivery coordinated across the region by the Network.
So far, more than 4,000 people in Greater Manchester have taken part on the course, which aims to encourage people to lead healthier lifestyles and lower their chances of developing type 2 diabetes.
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