NHS team looks at potential of COVID-19 'quick-fixes'
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AS THE coronavirus crisis forces everyone to do things differently – an NHS healthcare project is looking at whether some "quick-fixes" could become long-term solutions.
The Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative (SRMC) is funded by the Scottish Government to devise and test innovative ways of addressing the long-standing problems of the recruitment and retention of GPs in rural areas.
The SRMC, which is made up representatives of 10 area health boards including Grampian, as well as a range of other bodies, has put some of its work in abeyance while the clinicians associated with it deal with more pressing matters.
But, recognising that many of the changes GPs and others are making to their working lives have the potential to become permanent fixtures, it has been creating a resource which seeks to record new working practices.
Martine Scott, the SRMC’s programme manager, said: "We would like to capture the essence of improvements and temporary quick-fixes in Scotland’s remote communities in the hope that we can benefit from them in the future.
"We are already aware of lots of examples of things being done differently. For example, people in some of our island communities are unable to attend funerals during isolation. Ways of enabling people to ‘attend’ virtual funerals have had to be quickly developed. Given that cremations need to be carried out on the mainland, might this be a usual option in the future?
"Similarly, GPs throughout Scotland are increasingly using video consulting to avoid the risks associated with seeing patients in person. To what extent will that continue post-pandemic?"
The SRMC has drawn up a guidance paper to help practices in rural communities detail the changes they have made and how they feel these could be applied in the future.
Ms Scott added: "It would be a great shame if the lessons we are learning because of COVID-19 are lost when this crisis ends.
"While this work has been focusing on general practice in rural communities, I am sure it’s equally relevant throughout the NHS, and indeed in many other organisations, both public and private."
