As part of my PICH Journey- I had the opportunity to sit in a Learning Together Clinic which in my opinion was a great example of delivering patient centred care. I worked towards setting up the clinic within the paediatric rota. After overcoming local barriers such as consultant provision, rota management, identifying stakeholders and approval from GP practice manager, I was able to establish the clinic within the paediatric training rota. A number of registrars have done this clinic with overall positive feedback and have described this as a good learning opportunity.
Future Directions:
(1) Establish it as a sustained monthly clinic.
(2) Engage further GP practices, in particular with GP trainees who have not done paediatrics. The supervising consultant of the clinic is a College Tutor and is liaising with GP training programme directors to drive this forward.
(3) Identify children <16 years who are regularly accessing the GP
(4) Review existing practice- investigations and results for feedback and actions.
(5) Improve paediatric training, learning opportunity, triaging referral letters.
(6) Consider a GP email advice line for Paediatric Consultant/ Clinic Registrar opinion about cases or investigation results. This will hopefully reduce unnecessary referrals to secondary care.
There is increasing need to have better links with primary care and other services (social care, education) as this eventually improves patient and care provider experience.
Top Tips to Share
– Meet your mentor early so you can start project management as soon as possible
– Try to build on something rather than starting something from scratch.
– Don’t get frustrated if things are not going anywhere- it is an ongoing journey of learning
If I could do it all again…
– After each seminar I would have liked to do more reading around the topic especially with using data to drive change, process mapping etc.
– Consider wide clinical and non-clinical teams who have a lot to offer in terms of expertise and experience.