Remote and rural best practice helps fight against COVID-19
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The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented challenge to health care professionals all over the world. Recent developments have seen every member of the health care profession adapt and evolve to tackle the spread of this virus to save patients whilst facing increasingly difficult situations every day.
RCSEd in its commitment to making it better for all, is in regular communication with our Faculties to spotlight and share best practice that will support, guide and inspire the healthcare profession during these challenging times.
We caught up with Professor Angus Watson, RCSEd Lead Member of the Faculty of Remote and Rural Healthcare (FRRH) Executive Committee, on how Remote and Rural Healthcare teams long established practices can be propagated to other areas of the healthcare system and on new adaptations in tackling COVID-19.
[Angus on the RCSEd Tuanku Muhriz travelling fellowship talking about surgical management with medical officers and surgical masters candidates in Borneo]
How has the COVID-19 outbreak affected your practice and patient treatments?
"Delivering care for a geographically dispersed population, we have already adopted many novel ways of delivering care. The pandemic has created the environment for other colleagues to adopt these innovations: phone clinics, video consultations and the use of patient portals. Virtual consultations have a high patient satisfaction rate and save many carbon miles. Self-isolation has ‘forced’ healthcare colleagues and patients to try these ways of consultation and to a degree, have realised that any of their perceived risks about these non-standard tools, are probably less of a problem in reality."
What measures are your practice taking to increase standards in care and hygiene?
"We have trained to use PPE and have simulated operating in a COVID-19 theatre. We have introduced questionnaire and chest radiograph checks on the day that elective patients are being admitted to hospital. We have cohorted elective operating into a temporary theatre away from the main theatre complex."
How is the team adapting during the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the main priorities established during these difficult times?
"The different ‘tribes’ of medical specialties have come together to work differently. We have surgical trainees working within medicine and surgical consultants being trained on how to deliver intensive care. This fluidity will, I believe, reap dividends for health care systems once the pandemic is over. I hope a more thoughtful and caring workforce will emerge which will ultimately benefit patient care."
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