Two of our Allied Health Professionals services have been shortlisted for the prestigious national Chief Allied Health Professional Officer awards, this is a great achievement as the awards are always inundated with submissions.

The Essex Childrens Feeding and Dietetic Service (CFADS) and a multi-professional team from NELFT partnered with the London Ambulance Service have both been successful in the categories of ‘Digital Practice’ and ‘Innovation and Improvement in Integrated Care Systems’ respectively. See details below.

The submissions were made by Robert Ives, Dietitian, CFADS, and Ramiz Mungroo, Paramedic Lead, Waltham Forest Rapid Response team, who recognised that they were part of innovative, integrated, and forward-thinking services.

Both teams will find out if they have won at the awards ceremony on Thursday 12 October 2023. 

Innovation and Improvement in Integrated Care Systems

As a key part of NHS England’s Long Term Plan, NELFT began the roll out of Urgent Community Response Cars from February 2023.  This new approach helps treat our ageing population in the comfort of their own homes and can avoid the patient being taken to A&E helping to take some pressure off these extremely busy departments.  This works towards being a much more comfortable experience for the patient. 

The collaboration between a nurse/AHP from NELFT working alongside a paramedic from London Ambulance Service (LAS) enables us to man an Urgent Response Car 365 days per year.   

This concept wasn’t totally new to CTT, as we have been operating an Elderly fallers car, K466, for around 9 years, serving patients in the community/avoiding hospital admissions.

Working directly with LAS took this concept to a new level. We cover Havering, Barking & Dagenham & Redbridge, with three UCR Cars offering this service to a much wider community. 

We met with Charlotte and her team from LAS, alongside staff who had volunteered to work on Bank shifts. This included members of the Rapid Response Team from Waltham Forrest who played a key role at the start of the project.          

Bank staff were recruited, and we soon had a regular team. All staff were asked to provide Natalie Deadman Community Treatment Team Service Lead, with details of their experience and competencies which ensured that we had the most capable and professional staff.  

The specific skills of the nurse/AHP alongside those of the LAS paramedics would provide the opportunity for both parties to complement each other and therefore provide an excellent level of patient care.  Skills such as providing advanced physical health assessment, taking bloods, urine samples, gluing and wound care are required.

The paramedic has access to incoming live calls from the LAS control room and then a decision is made to see if the patient meets the criteria for the UCR Car. The car is then dispatched to the patient. Typically, these calls are categories 2 to 4.       

The nurse/HCP on the car is in regular contact with the lead nurse at CTT, advising when they were visiting a patient and updating the lead on their plan for the patient. The team at CTT are instrumental in supporting the UCR Car. The CTT Doctors review any blood results same day and prescribe any necessary medication. This is collected from a pharmacy and delivered by one of the team later that same day if possible.  If the patient was safe to keep at home and needed, follow up visits the next day then this was allocated to one of the CTT community nurses to do.              

Available shifts are circulated monthly and once chosen these are then booked. We work closely with Charlotte providing them with our cover monthly and this is updated as and when required so that both teams are aware of cover”.

 

Ramiz, pictured below, told us: "It was brought to my attention from Chris Tuckett about the CAHPO awards and suggested we put ourselves forwards with the initial pilot joint by London Ambulance Service in bringing two Trusts with the same objective - prevent unnecessary hospital admissions by responding together, using both our expertise and skills ensuring the patient is getting the right care at the right time.

"The collaboration is not only between the two trusts but also AHP’s working with jointly nursing staff, this from a paramedic perspective has not happened before where we jointly respond to patient directly from a “999 call”. During the planning stages between both trusts, to being one of the first clinicians responding on the urgent community response car; it has been enlightening to see how other services work and how we can continually improve to ensure the population of North East London are receiving excellent care in times of crisis.

"It’s been great that our hard work has recognised on a national level, our collaboration with London Ambulance service shows what a success when two trust working together benefit patients in our community. Lets hope we can win on the night."

Christopher Tuckett, NELFT Director of AHPs, said: "We should all celebrate their teams’ achievements and reflect on what awards we might nominate our own teams and services for. Congratulations to all involved, and good luck on the night!"

Carol White, Interim Director of Operations (London), said: "This a a great example of how working in collaboration we can create solutions that benefit out communities and the people we serve collectively. The teams worked incredibly hard to get the service up and running with our LAS colleagues. They should feel very proud of the service and how it delivered improved outcomes to support our residents to stay well at home."

Digital Practice