Promoting Planning Winner - NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Planning Your Care
Promoting Planning Winner - NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Planning Your Care
Don’t let a global pandemic stop you from planning your future!
In April 2020 the newly formed Anticipatory Care Planning (ACP) Programme in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde were a little flummoxed – set against the pain and trauma of a global pandemic, how could we begin to convince over a million people that talking about the future (including the taboo topics of death and dying) was something which could be empowering, cathartic and maybe even a little fun (?!). As a team we knew of the tremendous benefit planning ahead could have, now we just had to persuade the world.
So how did we begin to break the taboo? Unfortunately, as with most things in life, there was no magic button. However here are my top 3 tips for success…
Number 1 – systems. We have been fortunate to have an incredible eHealth team who have created an accessible and user friendly system to record our ACP Summary, enabling us to record everything from views on hospital admission to who could look after the cat. Knowing what matters to individuals is crucial in enabling plans to be quickly developed whilst staying true to the principles of person-centred care. Therefore having all information to hand in a crisis allows the right decisions to be made.
Similar to a Key Information Summary (KIS) from the world of Primary Care, our summary helps to give services an understanding of the person in front of them. However it also has the advantage of being accessible and editable by teams from across Primary, Acute, Mental Health, and Community. This prevents people having to tell their stories over and over again, and ensure all services have an awareness of the information each other has collected whilst preventing duplication of conversation.
Number 2 - attitude. The ACP team may be small (a grand total of 2!) but we have enough passion for the whole of the Scotland! Our enthusiasm and determination has allowed us to power through a pandemic, creating training packs and resources at a whirlwind pace and ensuring over 1000 members of staff have received live online training, and 1500 have accessed our e-module. No mean feat whilst pandemic pressures stretched the capacity and resilience of frontline staff to their limit!
Once restrictions began to lift, we were straight out the door delivering sessions to students, work teams and the public to encourage them to start the conversation, and always with smiles on our face.
We are an approachable duo, always happy to engage with services and find solutions to best support them, whether that is bespoke training, streamlining data collection forms, creating leaflets for day to day practice or just being a reassuring voice at the end of the phone to provide encouragement and the occasional piece of IT advice. We are fully committed to supporting our colleagues who are out on the frontline having these tender but powerful conversations with the public.
And this brings us to number 3 – colleagues. Partnership working has always been a key part of our work, however we have been extremely fortunate to work with fantastic colleagues to drive forward the ACP agenda. From supportive Chief Officers, to amazing GPs, from technical geniuses in IT to the most caring and compassionate professionals having daily conversations with patients. Every single person has embraced their role, and played their part in making the system work.
So fast-forward 3 years, what have we achieved? Well not everyone in the Board has an ACP yet, but we’re headed in the right direction!
When the programme first began there were only 19 ACP Summaries recorded on our system, today we have over 3200 with numbers increasing daily. We also have a thriving community of ACP champions who help and encourage their colleagues to engage in these important conversations, and signpost them to support when needed. Alongside this, we organises multiple events throughout the year to encourage people to start conversations; from appointing Power of Attorney, deciding whether to donate your body to science or learning about the full range of holistic services hospices can provide, our aim is to create compassionate communities that support each other from cradle to grave, where nothing is left unsaid and everyone is confident that whatever may come, we have a guide to help us plan together.
Find out more on the NHSGGC Planning Your Care website and Twitter account.
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