In social care, effective communication goes beyond knowledge and expertise to incorporate every aspect of interaction and experience. Care workers need to have the ability to empathise when needed and talk about potentially complicated procedures and issues calmly. Confrontation or disagreements can happen, and the need to defuse these challenging situations is perhaps the most important use of strong communications skills in care.
We previously published an article talking about the importance of staff training in health and social care, but perhaps a more important discussion was had in an article about empowerment in health and social care. Written by my colleague Neoma Toersen, her article discusses the risks inherent from clients losing autonomy and feeling like they no longer have control. This is where effective communication comes in, and can help develop a rapport, build a connection, and allow proper discussion about the wants, wishes and needs of the person receiving care.
In this article we will assess communication in health and social care, with a particular focus on barriers of communication in health and social care and how we can overcome them – with special mention of our eLearning for care software. Our hope is that by reading this article you will have a better understanding of how to navigate not only the base level of conversation with patients or clients, but also the channels of communication and how to best go about engaging with people to make connections, gain insights, and ultimately improve their care.
What is communication in health and social care?
In a follow-up to our previous video consultation article, we wanted to expand upon our explanation of video call appointments as a healthcare concept and touch upon the reality of their usage.
There are lots of video call applications and programs in existence at present. Solutions such as Skype are a little older, whilst Zoom represents the newest generation – having exploded in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic and social lockdowns. These are just a couple of examples, and modern healthcare has quite rightly picked up on the potential of video consultation and the wide array of software available.
In this article we will be discussing video consultation software and its purpose, as well as evaluating the available solutions on the market and comparing their functionality to see which is best overall and which have unique selling points that might suit more specific needs from healthcare providers.
After reading this, you should have a much better idea of the best online consultation app for you and your patients.
Video consultation software
A Trust Integration Engine (TIE) isn’t the most well-known of terminology but they are an important part of modern healthcare, specifically relating to digital solutions.
Integration engines are used across different industries and more common non-healthcare related engines are applications like Microsoft BizTalk. NHS Trusts, directed by NHS Digital guidelines and frameworks, use specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to communicate information between software. This allows for connectivity within a hospital setting, but more importantly it supports nationwide communication and coordination of care and research.
This poses a problem when you have as many solutions and tools as an organisation the size of NHS England does. Invariably you need additional support to onboard these solutions and integrate them with existing software, to ensure a smooth introduction and continual service provision. Anything less than this risks patients and their care.
In this article we will explain what healthcare integration engines are, why the NHS uses them (particularly NHS trusts in England), and how they differ from interface solutions. We’ll also expand on basics such as what an API is, and more specific information such as the HL7 requirements for these APIs. To conclude we will showcase some of the NHS Trusts using a TIE and explain why you – like the NHS – need these tools.
What is a Healthcare Information Exchange?
YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning have been in partnership since 2020. This partnership has been able to provide bespoke commissioning solutions to customers across health and social care, transport, housing, and procurement.
But what are the benefits of this partnership? How does it overcome the challenges the public sector face during the procurement cycle and what are the best ways to use YPO frameworks?
By the end of this article, all these questions should be answered as well how a YPO framework agreement works, and how working with both YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning is the best way to procure the services and goods your local authority needs at the best value for money.
At The Access Group we are aware of the challenges of procurement in the public sector and they can be difficult to overcome, especially when transitioning to digital procurement. We want to help local authorities make the process of commissioning and procuring the services they tend as easy as possible, at a better value, and take a fraction of the time.
This article will review who YPO are, how they work, why we decided to partner with them, as well as the best ways your local community can work with both of us to get the best outcomes.
Video consultation swiftly grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the need for social distancing, and the success they have had convinced GP surgeries, hospitals and other mental health and community care services to expand the amount of these video consultations they are having on a daily basis.
The concept was limited a decade ago given the capacity of NHS equipment and personal technology. Smartphones were only just offering video calls (think Apple’s ‘Facetime’) and the combination of webcam quality and internet speed wasn’t cost-friendly, but as time has gone by so too have quality and cost improved enough to meet a minimum standard that supports a wider rollout of such an approach to virtual appointments.
A healthcare video consultation is typically used in primary care and secondary care settings, with tertiary care and quaternary care being more specialised and advanced and likely a face-to-face situation for the sake of importance and potential severity.
My end goal is to take away any of the stigma surrounding this healthcare technology and to evaluate video consultation fairly. In this article I’ll spell out what a video consultation is, but I will also provide a patient’s guide to how they work. In addition, I’ll cover the benefits of a medical video consultation, the drawbacks, and the industry consensus on how important they are with input from the likes of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the General Medical Council.
Anticipatory care is similar to proactive or preventative care, which we’ll discuss in further detail shortly, but it’s an overlooked aspect of healthcare that we want to explore in this article. It relates heavily to palliative care; care that alleviates suffering but ultimately cannot treat a condition. Sadly, these patients are often end of life cases. Some will be managed within a hospital setting, whilst others will be cared for in a residential care home, hospice or nursing home or – on rare occasions - at home, and all is done through an anticipatory care plan.
The crux of this article will be discussing the concept of the anticipatory care plan, and how it is an addition to existing preventative, proactive or reactive care – a topic Access has already written about. The anticipatory care approach works to intervene before a person’s condition deteriorates. In some cases this can be tactical care support that builds up an individual, so that they’re stronger or more resilient in the face of illness, but in others it’s purely support to prevent suffering.
Anticipatory care interventions are somewhat similar to advanced care planning, which itself is the foresight to predict outcomes ahead of time (whether that relates to age, gender, past illnesses, family history or specific issues in society at that time like Covid). In the case of anticipatory care though it’s more forward planning; a discussion between client and carers about the individual’s wishes, their hopes, their fears, and the best approach to ensure their needs are met.
In this article we will give the anticipatory care definition, as well as focus heavily on the anticipatory care plan and what it is, what framework it uses, and how it relates to palliative care. We’ll also explore how NHS England and NHS Scotland differ on the matter, before concluding with a round-up of the subject matter and how the anticipatory care and preventative care can work in tandem.
Healthcare is in the process of ‘levelling up’ with widescale digitisation of solutions to support clinicians, administrators and patients. However, to better improve the patient experience healthcare providers need to engage with patients more and encourage patient activation.
This has traditionally been done by literature (pamphlets, books etc) but is now being done by text or email alerts from healthcare providers and via patient portals, where individuals can access their medical records, personal information, educational resources, and contact information to speak with clinicians.
Patient engagement cannot happen without patient activation though – which we expand upon below – and that is the crux of this article: what patient activation is and how it ties in with patient engagement.
We also explore ways of “activating patients” i.e. encouraging their interest in their care, as well as how the NHS PAM tool works and how to potentially increase patient activation.
Following on from our article ‘What is patient flow management?’ we move on to evaluating how to go about improving patient flow.
Modern healthcare is undergoing necessary mass digitisation but while this process is going on it’s crucial that healthcare professionals (clinical, administrative, or managerial) evaluate all of the care procedures and processes currently in place to ensure they are still appropriate.
One such process is patient flow, which is also one of the biggest factors affecting care. The technological makeover of healthcare is being driven through on the basis of improving care for the individual. This can be seen on the basis of speeding up treatment, accommodating patients more with flexibility in appointments and treatment locations, engaging communication, reduced workload and duress for staff… the list goes on. Without adequate patient flow, none of this can be achieved. There’s no smart scheduling for appointments and staff rotas. There’s no rapid adjustments between wards and departments for bed usage or patient follow-ups.
In this article we will explore just how important patient flow is, as well as how important it is to improve patient flow, how to do this, and how the NHS might approach this from a strategic perspective. It is our hope that this can serve as a good practice guide with focus on improving patient flow.
Considering how many people are cared for in a hospital on a daily basis, how many members of staff a hospital employs, and how many different departments, teams and specialties there are, it’s a very sensible approach to implement a hospital management system (HMS).
Organisations need order, clarity and control. A HMS can provide this, and these days does so with the reliance on an information system powered by healthcare software. This can be cloud-based (remotely hosted) or held on an internal, private server – all depending on a hospital’s preference – but in both instances will help simplify what is a complicated oversight process.
In this article I will explain the functionality of a hospital management system, the early origins and the evolution of HMS in line with technological developments, as well as the many benefits to be had from these systems and the challenges facing management. After reading, you should be much better equipped to assess these systems yourself.
Ensuring health and care professionals have up-to-date information is crucial. Better information means better care can be provided by giving the most appropriate treatment.
At present your medical information exists in a unique record per healthcare organisation or provider you visit, be it your local GP, the pharmacy, a physiotherapist, or A&E. This means organisations need to request access to your existing information to build up a patient profile and your bigger health picture.
This isn’t convenient, but a shared care record is. Shared care records help caregivers and clinicians by collating all of a patient’s information, but it’s the interoperability of health and care software that gives them access to this information at the point of care throughout a patient’s journey.
Funding shortfall, staff shortages, and increased life expectancy are all putting huge pressure on the NHS, and other care groups are experiencing similar difficulties. By pursuing opportunities to improve care and make care provision more efficient, healthcare organisations can reduce some of this pressure – allowing them to continue to be there for people in need. Joined-up care is the future, and NHS shared care records are a way to achieve this.
