Commissioning Excellence

The latest issue of the Primary Care Commissioning newsletter is now available. Read it here.

Educational outreach visits to improve venous thromboembolism prevention in hospitalised medical patients

"Educational outreach visiting is effective at improving doctors' provision of pharmacological VTE prophylaxis to hospitalised medical patients. It was also found to be an acceptable implementation strategy by the majority of participants; however, it was resource intensive requiring on average 92 minutes per visit."

Educational outreach visits to improve venous thromboembolism prevention in hospitalised medical patients: a prospective before-and-after intervention study
J Duff, A Omari, S Middleton, E McInnes, K Walker
BMC Health Services Research, 2013, 13:398

Read more here.

Implementation of nice guidance on venous thromboembolism risk assessment and prophylaxis

"Our results show an improvement in the percentage of patients who are risk assessed for VTE across all hospitals."

The implementation of nice guidance on venous thromboembolism risk assessment and prophylaxis: a before-after observational study to assess the impact on patient safety across four hospitals in England
AG Bateman, R Sheaff, S Child, O Boiko, OC Ukoumunne, T Nokes, A Copplestone, CA Gericke
BMC Health Services Research, 2013, 13:203

Read more here.

'Harm free' care

This initiative is the national roll out of the pilot Safety Express QIPP programme. 'Harm free' care is defined by the absence of pressure ulcers, falls, urinary catheters, and venous thromboembolism, and this collection of resources and case studies has been developed to reduce these incidents.

Find out more and access all the resources here.

eLearning resources to improve patient care

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has formed a joint venture with Virtual College to develop the Productives e-learning suite. This suite is designed for staff, team leaders, programme managers and leaders to help them use The Productive Series: Releasing Time to Care (TM) programme.

Read more here.

eLearning for Healthcare has developed "e-learning for Harm Free Care", an online educational resource designed to support frontline teams in delivering harm free care, as defined by an absence of four common harms: pressure ulcers, harm from falls, catheter acquired urinary tract infections (CaUTI) and venous thromboembolism (VTE).

Find out more here.

Educating surgical patients to reduce the risk of venous thromboembolism

"A simple method of introducing patient education at pre-assessment clinic and as part of their discharge planning, for major elective surgery, is an effective system in improving patient understanding of VTE, its risk factors and the importance of prophylaxis."

Educating surgical patients to reduce the risk of venous thromboembolism: an audit of an effective strategy
H Sadideen, JM O'Callaghan, M Navidi, M Sayegh
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Short Reports, 2011, 2(12):97

Read more here.