Come and join us at an event to mark a decade of driving health service improvements for people in Greater Manchester.
We will be showcasing the work of our networks so far, as well as looking towards the future within the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership at the Manchester Art Gallery event.
Many people working within the city region’s health and care system will have been involved with the work of the networks at some point.
We will be marking the anniversary on Thursday, November 2, 2023, 2pm – 6pm, at Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3JL.
The event is supported by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh who will be providing a light evening buffet for those who can stay, to say thank you for your contributions over the years.
Spaces are limited, so please email your interest to Michelle Davies.
 Pictured above, l-r: Dr Manisha Kumar, NHS Greater Manchester chief medical director, and deputy chief medical officers Dr Clare Lake and Dr Steve Knight.
Around 200 people from health, social care and the voluntary sector attended our Heart of the Matter event to showcase the CVD prevention work taking place in Greater Manchester.
Our clinical leads Dr Aseem Mishra and Professor Farzin Fath-Ordoubadi, as well as NHS Greater Manchester’s chief medical director, Dr Manisha Kumar, opened the day at the Ethihad Stadium, followed by a packed agenda full of discussion and ideas.
Dr Mishra (pictured right) spoke about CVD being a ‘wicked problem’ to solve and launched new Greater Manchester toolkits designed to support teams to deliver excellent care to everyone.
Dr Mishra said: “After successfully hosting 'Heart Of the Matter: Greater Manchester's Movement for Cardiovascular Health and Wellbeing', we've ignited a unified movement for cardiovascular disease prevention in Greater Manchester.
“With insights from Andy Burnham and a plethora of system leaders across various healthcare sectors, we've fostered collaborative discussions and launched essential toolkits for our health and care professionals.
He added: “Proudly, we announced our accelerated progress in hypertension management, surpassing the national average—a testament to the collective efforts of all in GM. While we celebrate our advancements and the momentum we have gathered, we acknowledge there is a significant journey ahead.
“We are optimistic and committed to continuing this crucial work, with the conviction that, together, we will make Greater Manchester a beacon of cardiovascular health and wellbeing.”
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Other speakers at the event included the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham (pictured left), who spoke about the importance of working as one system when it comes to tackling CVD and health inequalities and that the city region was taking positive steps, despite living in tough financial times.
And there were other perspectives on CVD from Jane Pilkington, director of population health, NHS Greater Manchester, Dr Cordelle Ofori, deputy director of public health, Manchester City Council, and NHS Greater Manchester deputy chief medical officers Dr Claire Lake and Dr Steve Knight.
The toolkits will be downloadable online shortly.
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Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a life-threatening condition with only one in 13 people surviving, making it a key priority for the Cardiovascular Network.
From September 1, 2023, under the clinical leadership of the network, a new pathway is being piloted in North Manchester and Stockport.
Anyone suffering an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest caused by a heart attack identified by an ECG (STEMI) in the trial catchment area will be taken directly to their closest Heart Attack Centre, rather than the closest emergency department. This is so that they can get specialised care, including primary angioplasty (to open up a blocked artery) that is shown to improve survival rates.
There are two Heart Attack Centres in Greater Manchester, at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Wythenshawe Hospital.
FACT:
3,600 people in North West suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year.
Separate to the emergency department, the Heart Attack Centres enable patients to receive speedy access to specialist heart care, tests and treatments that give them the best possible chance to survive.
The aim of the pilot is to support the development of a cohesive pathway for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, resulting in appropriate patients being deflected away from emergency departments and towards more appropriate specialist care as an extension of our current primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) services.
The pilot will run for three months, and if successful, the Cardiac Network will explore how this can be rolled out to other parts of Greater Manchester.
If you are interested in this pilot or have any questions, do not hesitate to contact Professor Farzin Fath-Ordoubadi, Consultant Cardiologist and his colleagues within the Cardiac Network via england.gmec-scn@nhs.net.
The Greater Manchester Cardiac Network and associates joined Heart Valve Voice at 10 libraries across the Manchester locality to take part in heart checks for the community.
The event was to support awareness of heart valve disease, a serious condition that affects 1.5 million people in the UK, and can be detected through a stethoscope check.
The network wants to send a big thank you to Heart Valve Voice and our associates for supporting the events throughout the week.
A roadshow is pulling into two Greater Manchester towns next month to check the cardiovascular health of local people.
On Monday, October 16, the Your Heart Matters roadshow will reach Bury, at the Millgate shopping centre.
The team will be there from 10am, listening to hearts, doing blood pressure checks and even heart failure tests (for those who fit the criteria).
The next day, the roadshow pulls into Leigh, where the same tests will be carried out. The venue is yet to be confirmed, but we will announce it on our Twitter feed.
The Network is very excited to be working with Wigan locality members, as well as Heart Valve Voice again.
The Palliative and End of Life Care team is working with the Greater Manchester system to support anticipatory care planning for people with a life limiting illness.
The Network has been supporting the use of the EARLY tool, which is a clinical search tool, initially developed in the North West and London, to identify patients from general practice records who are likely to be in the last year of life and have palliative and end of life care needs.
The EARLY searches will generate lists of patients who could potentially be in the last year of life, but the clinical validation of these results is an essential part of the process.
Early identification of people in the last year of life is recommended in the ‘Palliative and End of Life Care Handbook for Integrated Care Boards’ 2022.
The principle underpinning earlier identification of people in the last year of life is to ensure timely conversations about supporting people to live as well as they can before they die, and empowering people to make important decisions about their care and wishes, both now and in the future.
The Greater Manchester palliative and end of life care programme has run two implementation phases, led by GP clinical facilitators with 16 primary care networks.
A suite of webinars and education resources have been developed to support the process of EARLY identification. The report from phase 2 highlighted key learning and recommendations for future roll out of the tool.
In 2022-23, the Palliative and End of Life Care Network collaborated in a North West wide project to undertake a review of the EARLY toolkit. This review is now complete and we are exploring opportunities to roll out a third phase of support to GP practices and other professionals across Greater Manchester to take advantage of the benefits this brings in terms of anticipatory care planning.
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A further opportunity to support the coordination of care for the people of Greater Manchester with identified palliative and end of life care needs is the introduction of the Greater Manchester Care Record, an electronic solution to sharing information across several organisational boundaries. Palliative and end of life care takes place across all settings of the health and social care system and therefore the GMCR is an ideal solution for sharing critical information for enhancing well informed decision making, which is aligned to an individual’s choices and wishes.
The Palliative and End of Life Care Network is currently working with Health Innovation Manchester to increase the use of the electronic palliative care coordination system (EPaCCS) built into the GMCR to share key information, with consent, to support people at the end of their lives.
Living with a neurological condition can have a huge impact on a person’s life – both physically and mentally.
The Network has been focusing on improving access to psychological rehabilitation to ensure our inpatient and community teams provide a more holistic package of care when treating stroke survivors and other neurological conditions like motor neurone disease.
Its clinical lead, Dr Janice Mackenzie (pictured left), is a senior clinical psychologist with Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust. She is leading the upskilling of the local clinical stroke and neurorehabilitation inpatient and community staff so they can provide better support patients and their families in their care.
Dr Mackenzie has developed a programme of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) for local clinicians, with an initial session held in July and a follow up planned for November.
Attendees can also access additional specialist support if they do not have a psychologist in the team. Around 100 inpatient and community staff have attended so far, with 70% reporting they had already used ACT in their clinical practice.
The team has also run Mental Capacity Act training as part of workforce development in this area, with Janice leading a face to face course recently (online training is also available).
The network is also undertaking a detailed scoping exercise of all community teams to understand how psychological and cognitive assessments and interventions are being delivered, and the results will help to standardise and improve practice within the different community teams.
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The Network supported this year’s #AskAboutAsthma campaign, which urged parents of children with asthma to work with GPs and nurses to take four steps to help them live full and active lives.
The campaign ran from September 11-17, just before ‘Week 38’ - the third week back at school after the summer break, which annually sees the highest number of asthma attacks.
The Network ran a social media campaign and its children and young people asthma clinical lead, Dr Easwari Kothandaraman wrote a blog, which you can read via this link.
In Greater Manchester, almost 6,500 children and young people went to A&E due to asthma and around 1,350 were admitted for treatment, in the 12 months from January 2022.
This is significantly higher than elsewhere in the North West and nationally.
The four steps which can help manage asthma are:
- get a personalised asthma action plan in place
- understand how to use inhalers correctly
- schedule an asthma review every year and after every attack
- consider air pollution and its impact on lung health – every asthma conversation should involve around what each of us can do to minimise impact of poor indoor air quality and outdoor air pollution on children and young people’s asthma.
Dr Kothandaraman (pictured right) said: “This campaign is timely reminder that it is really important for parents and their children to speak to their doctor or asthma nurse and take these four steps to better-manage their asthma.
“Greater Manchester has a significantly higher number of children going to hospital with asthma attacks when compared with the North West or nationally. In some areas of Greater Manchester only 22% of children admitted to hospital have an asthma action plan, which is significantly lower than the national average. By taking simple steps, we can make a big difference.”
The #AskAboutAsthma campaign, which is led by the NHS England – London’s Babies, Children and Young People’s programme, had the theme ‘Widening our view’ for 2023, with the aim of shining a light on the wider factors of children and young people’s asthma care, including housing, mould and vaping.
Click this link for more information.
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Just a quick note to remind you that the Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Strategic Clinical Networks is now on LinkedIn!
If you haven't already, please log into LinkedIn, search 'Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Strategic Clinical Networks' and follow us to keep up-to-date with news about our Networks.
Thirteen pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) teams across Greater Manchester are spreading the word about the benefits of their work.
The teams are busy linking in with their local primary care, hospital and community teams to sell the benefits of PR, widen access and increase and improve referrals.
An example of the work being done by teams was the recent GP event attended by the Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (HMR) service (pictured above).
The team made a presentation to 43 GPs, showing the services’ website, video and gaining feedback on many areas of PR, including the campaign which is promoting the services, GP referral process, the barriers for patients attending and how access to PR can be improved.
The campaign received an excellent response and the GP feedback will be used to improve the service at HMR, as well as be shared across the Greater Manchester collaborative to help all services.
HMR plans to use the data gained on widening access and addressing health inequalities in their work with Manchester University on a culturally adapting PR study.
This month sees the start of the Network’s first ever cohort for a post-graduate certificate in advancing diabetes care.
This level 7 course is being delivered by Birmingham City University and will cover a range of topics including effective person-centred diabetes education, leadership in diabetes care and physical activity management.
A total of 29 healthcare professionals are enrolled in the course from primary care, and include a mixture of GPs, practice nurses and pharmacists.
The course will be delivered through a range of face to face in person sessions and online teaching over the next nine months.
A one day hybrid course in maternal medicine for midwives is being held this December.
Organised by the Obstetric Medicine Company Ltd, the course is free for those who attend online and £30 for those who want to attend in person.
The faculty for the day includes experienced obstetric physicians, nurse specialists and maternal medicine lead midwives. They will discuss the key questions to ask and the red flags to look out for in pregnant women who present with breathlessness, headache, abdominal pain, palpitations, and other common symptoms in pregnancy.
There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to discuss particular cases. There will be a presentation discussing how to interpret blood tests in pregnancy and how to recognise medicines that are safe from those unsafe to take during pregnancy and much more.
Click the link for further information and details of how to register for the event on Wednesday, December 13.
Our resident quiz genius Colin Daffern has been winning prizes on TV again – this time on the primetime gameshow Pointless!
Col, who by day works in the Cardiovascular Network team, managed to win the jackpot with his friend and former work colleague Steve (who was also his team mate on Only Connect in 2016).
Col, from Boothstown, said: "Going on Pointless was a great experience. Myself and Steve have been applying for a good few years, so we were really pleased to finally get on.
“We were even more pleased to win the jackpot, and getting three pointless answers in the final round was the icing on the cake!"
Col has previously appeared on Lightning, which he also won, as well as Mastermind (three times), Eggheads, Fifteen to One and a short-lived show called A Question of Genius.
He was also a semi-finalist on Brain of Britain and reached the Champions League stage of Ken Bruce’s Popmaster on Radio 2.
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