This week sees us mark our 10th year of driving health service improvements for people with an event in central 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 this Thursday (November 2).
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.
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.
Look out for a full report into the event in next month’s newsletter.
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One of the Network’s clinical leads was among a team which picked up an award for their outstanding services for parents-to-be.
Dr Ghazia Saleemi, maternity clinical lead, and Sarah Thomas, specialist pre-term midwife at the Preterm Prevention Clinic service at St Mary's Managed Clinical Services, Wythenshawe, were North West winners of the UK MUM awards, organised by Baby Lifeline.
They were nominated by mum Chantelle, who put the team’s name forward for their high quality care before, during and after her pregnancy. You can read the story about the birth of her son Harrison here.
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Dr Saleemi said: “We were so honoured to be nominated and then to go on to win the North West region award.
“It is even more special as one of our patients nominated us. We have worked hard on our service to ensure we keep the patient at the centre of the care they receive and for it to be nominated, has been very rewarding.”
Dr Saleemi and the team have been working hard implementing the recommendations of the Saving Babies Lives bundle, which aims to improve maternity safety and has been a long-term project for the Network.
As well as receiving the award, the clinical lead and her colleague were also treated to a drinks reception at Downing Street by Baby Lifeline.
She added: “It was an amazing experience - once in a lifetime!”
Photo above: Dr Saleemi and her colleague Sarah Thomas at the awards ceremony.
Above right: The two winners outside Number 10 Downing Street.
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Our Cardiovascular Network teamed up with local clinicians, care professionals and charity partners to deliver two events offering free heart checks to people aged 40-plus.
The first stop earlier this month was Millgate Shopping Centre, in Bury, followed by Tesco Extra in Leigh, with members of the public offered a range of free tests to check their heart health, including:
- Blood pressure checks - where a cuff is placed around the arm and inflated.
- Electrocardiogram (ECG) – where fingers are placed on sensors attached to a device to check heart rhythm and electrical activity.
- Stethoscope checks – where a clinician uses a stethoscope to listen to the heart.
- A finger prick blood test for anyone showing signs or symptoms of heart failure.
More than 450 people received free heart checks across the two days, with some being encouraged to seek a follow up check.
Pictured above: a patient having his heart listened to by a nurse using a stethoscope, a group gathered in Millgate Shopping Centre Bury waiting for health checks, a patient wearing a blood pressure cuff and having an ECG.
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Since 2015, the region’s centralised hyper acute stroke pathway has ensured all Greater Manchester residents receive ‘A’ graded care.
Under the auspices of the Network, the city region is the only one in the UK to have also fully transformed our community services into an integrated model that we pioneered and is now part of the national stroke service model.
Local stroke teams have made considerable progress in the past two years after suffering a decline during the pandemic, and although there is more work to do, Greater Manchester has returned to having 6-9 stroke units rated as ‘A’ or ‘B’.
The Stroke Association has just published a national pilot of Patient Reported Experience Measures that shows stroke survivors and carers in our region positively rate many different aspects of inpatient and community stroke services more highly than the rest of the country.
Greater Manchester also offers six month post-stroke reviews to a greater proportion of residents and the Stroke Association and other voluntary sector services in the city region are also more positively rated.
The latest national stroke audit data shows that Greater Manchester tracks above national average in most key areas of stroke care.
The Network is proud that the region provides some of the best stroke care in the country via a regional pathway that delivers the national stroke model in both hospital and community settings and in partnership with the voluntary sector. You can read the full report here.
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Table left: around 30% more patients get seen by a community stroke team than nationally. |
Integrated pathways of care are essential for delivery of high quality services with better patient experiences and outcomes.
The Network continues to collaborate with the voluntary sector and recently held its first Motor Neurone Disease (MND) training event for local clinicians (pictured right).
It is working in a novel partnership with the MND care centre at the Manchester Centre for Clinical Neurosciences at Salford Royal Hospital as well as the MND Association.
Together, they are facilitating an ambitious programme of pathway improvement work, with upskilling clinicians the cornerstone of the approach. The Network also recently held another joint education event on the criminal justice system and neurological conditions with the North West branch of the UK Acquired Brain Injury Foundation.
The event featured some key experts in law and clinical psychology, with more than 80 people registered from across the country.
You can find out more about the extensive training programme here and follow the Network on Twitter/X @GMNISDN.
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A pilot project the Network has been involved with to support deaf people getting access to information about diabetes was nominated for an award.
Jenny Schofield (pictured right), from the team, joined the Manchester Deaf Centre at the DESMOND awards in Leicester.
The team had a great day raising awareness of this piece of work and started some helpful discussions around how to work with communities to help shape services.
The initiative started last year when the Network delivered a workshop at the Manchester Deaf Centre to raise awareness of the risk factors associated with developing diabetes.
This session highlighted that the deaf community is at greater risk of developing diabetes due to factors including a lack of access to information and not being able to access public health messaging on radio and TV.
It also highlighted that current diabetes structured education courses are not inclusive of the deaf community.
The Network has since worked with Leicester Diabetes Centre to adapt its current structured education course to make it suitable for the community.
The team has worked alongside the Manchester Deaf Centre to support this work and will be piloting the courses next month before rolling them out across Greater Manchester from next year.
The DESMOND organisation's mission is to design, deliver and embed world-leading evidence-based education and support for people with or at risk of type 2 diabetes, and other long-term conditions.
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 Calling colleagues working in GP practices and sexual health services across Greater Manchester!
The Diabetes Network wants to hear from you about preconception planning for people living with diabetes.
The survey, which should take no more than 5 minutes to complete, will help the Network understand service provision and areas which may need to be improved to ensure people living with diabetes and babies get the best possible outcomes.
If you have any questions or would prefer to speak to someone, you can contact Sarka Grayson, project manager in the Diabetes Network.
Following an accessibility assessment on the Diabetes My Way website, both its logo and website colour themes have been refreshed by the organisation which runs the resource.
Diabetes My Way scored low for accessibility, with some people finding the logo difficult to read, and the decision has been made to change its name to MyWay Diabetes.
The transition from Diabetes My Way to MyWay Diabetes has been happening seamlessly during October and users can continue to log in using existing credentials.
All data and information will be securely transferred to the new platform.
If you would like more information on how MyWay Diabetes can support you and your patients, or you are having technical issues please contact the support team at support@mwdh.co.uk.
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Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) services across Greater Manchester are working with the Network team to increase recruitment.
The PR collaborative, which consists of teams across the city region, met recently to look at solutions to a recent drop in recruitment and it was identified that promotion of the role is a big issue, with lots of misconceptions about the work involved.
The group decided that there was a need for the role to be sold in an appealing way to students and existing physios and three videos have been made which feature a PR physio team lead, occupational PR team lead and a therapy assistant speaking about their daily tasks and what they love about their roles (see photos from the shooting of the videos above).
The videos will be shared with undergraduate and HR departments for use at careers fairs, in job adverts, and across primary and secondary care physio teams to raise the profile of the PR respiratory role.
They will also be posted shortly on the Keep active, breathe better website.
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Our clinical director, Dr Peter Elton, reflects on his recent visit to Australia and the similarities in challenges facing us over 10,000 miles apart.
Pictured left: Even the bunkers are on a bigger scale in Australia. Peter struggled to get out of this.
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The most common topic of conversation over the last month in Australia has been the Voice.
The Australian public turned down a constitutional amendment to guarantee representation of the First Nations people, that is Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. After 12 years of consultation, 80% of First Nations people supported the Voice.
And yet the rest of the population (96%), most of whom want to see the deprivation and discrimination experienced by those of the First Nations ameliorated, voted substantially against the Voice. It made me think that in our everyday work, we need to be very careful before rejecting the views of those most affected by any policy. The Australian public may well be right but it made me feel uncomfortable.
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I was privileged to meet Vivienne Milch who is medical director of Cancer Australia. Top of her present agenda is to introduce lung cancer screening in Australia based on the Manchester screening programme. Her biggest challenge, similar to Manchester, is to reach those who will benefit most from screening. The inverse care law, whereby those who are most deprived are least likely to receive the service, applies as much in Australia as it does in Greater Manchester.
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Having reached an age where a major point of conversation for most of my friends is their medical problems, I was asked about treatment for hypertension. An Australian friend was distressed that he was being asked to increase the dose of the one drug he was taking to reduce his blood pressure despite previously suffering side-effects when put on that higher dose.
I looked up at Australian guidelines which I was pleased to see were almost identical to the guidelines we had agreed in Greater Manchester: "If target not reached after 3 months: Add a second drug from a different pharmacological class at a low–moderate dose, rather than increasing the dose of the first drug. This maximises antihypertensive efficacy, while minimising adverse effects."
Changing ingrained clinical habits is clearly as difficult in Australia as it is here.
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