Category Archives: Events

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Care homes of the future: Prof Ala Szczepura on telecare and skill-mix innovations

alaProfessor Ala Szczepura Executive Director of the new Centre for Technology Enabled Health Research CTEHR) at Coventry University gave the final lecture of 2014 in the Community and Health Research Unit’s Improvement Science and Research Methods Seminar Series on ‘Care homes of the future: emerging evidence on the role of telecare and skill-mix innovations’. Prof Szczepura, who has a long and distinguished track record as a health services researcher, spoke to staff from the School of Health and Social Care, local NHS Trusts and CaHRU on the potential for new technology to bridge the gap between the increasing burden of comorbidity associated with ageing to enable people to age well and reduce dependency.

She described how levels of morbidity were particularly high in the half a million people resident in care homes, 60% who and have dementia and 25% with a long term condition, and how clients and staff in care homes were neglected in research and policy. She then described three studies involving in-reach nursing teams, decision support, and safer prescribing, each of which had led to some positive benefits.

[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2014/12/Szczepura-Lincoln-2012.pdf” responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

Prof Szczepura went on to describe ways forward which included introducing new systems to support the care home workforce to enhance quality of care and patient safety, enabling wider professional development of the social care workforce to perform specific clinical support tasks, facilitating partnership working with NHS since savings and benefits are often to the NHS, and the need to encourage introduction of more technology in long-term residential care settings such as expert systems for polypharmacy alerts, clinical decision-support systems and remote monitoring.

 

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CaHRU receives university team award for achievement in research 2014

CaHRUaward2014750The Community and Health Research Unit received the team award for achievement research at the University of Lincoln awards on 19 November 2014, where Despina Laparidou, Jolien Vos, Dr Jo Middlemass, Ana Godoy Caballero and Viet-Hai Phung (pictured left to right) accepted the award on behalf of CaHRU. Since the submission to the Research Excellence Framework a year ago the unit has particularly focused on developing early career researchers (ECRs), junior researchers and doctoral students, aiming to develop their research expertise, skills and outputs as future researchers and research leaders, and to increase capacity for international and world class research.

CaHRU_logotypeThis is being done through: mentorship and support for junior staff; a monthly research writing group at which all members of the team, NHS colleagues, visiting professors and East Midlands NIHR Research Design Service staff meet to review research bids and journal papers prior to submission, and where colleagues also have an opportunity to review feedback from reviewers prior to revising bids and journal papers; a six weekly implementation science and research methods seminar at which members of the CaHRU team and external academic experts present the latest ideas on methodology.

The unit also provides opportunities for junior staff to develop their skills and expertise by working with more senior members of the team and external academic experts from the rest of the EU and internationally on projects. Our efforts have led to successful grant funding for the team and increased our outputs in high quality peer reviewed journals involving ECRs and junior researchers as lead authors and co-authors.

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International keynote lecture and workshop in Amsterdam on interdisciplinary primary care for occupational and physiotherapy

Soemitro Poerbidipoero and students from the Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Soemitro Poerbidipoero and students from the Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Prof Niro Siriwardena presented a keynote lecture and joint workshop with a leading European community occupational therapist, Marije Bolt, to begin the ‘International seminar fur students: occupational therapy, primary care and interdisciplinary work’ at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam on 20 November 2014. Both are members of the advisory board of the European Forum for Primary Care. The workshop entitled: ‘Preparing for future challenges for occupational and physio-therapies in multidisciplinary primary care’ was given at invitation from Soemitro Poerbodipoero, International Coordinator at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and students at the institution.

VProf Siriwardena’s keynote lecture outlined the future challenges for primary and community care in Europe. This included analysis of the shift from secondary to primary care in most European countries, and the critical importance of interdisciplinary working involving primary care, community nursing and allied health professions for high quality community care for people with multiple long term health and social care conditions. The talk covered the need for integrated care to address the ever changing and complex health and social care system. Finally, he spoke about the importance of quality improvement tools and techniques for maintaining and improving the healthcare system.

Marije Bolt in Amsterdam

Marije Bolt in Amsterdam

Marije Bolt entered the auditorium in dramatic fashion on a bicycle, which is how she travels around Amsterdam to visit her clients. She went on to discuss ‘primary care in action’ discussing the international perspective, focusing on challenges for primary and community care, and reflecting on examples where care coordination could be improved. Both speakers facilitated students to apply this to a discussion of a case study.

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Professor Niro Siriwardena on primary care management of insomnia at Royal Society of Medicine

CBTiRSM2014Prof Niro Siriwardena was one of the invited speakers at the Royal Society of Medicine conference on CBT for insomnia disorder: evidence base and practical implementation methods, where he spoke on ‘Applying CBT for insomnia in general practice’. This was based on work from the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment project (www.restproject.org.uk) which is a programme of work exploring the potential for using psychological treatments for insomnia routinely in primary care instead of sleeping tablets.

Niro@RSM2014._750The event, which took place on 19 November in London was organised by Prof Colin Espie, sleep expert  at Oxford University. He introduced a number of distinguished speakers, international experts in their field, including Prof Charles Morin from Quebec who gave an overview of insomnia and CBT efficacy studies; Prof Kevin Morgan from Loughborough University who spoke on CBT for insomnia in older adults; Dr June Brown on small and large group CBT; Dr John Cape on CBT bibliotherapy for insomnia; and Dr Simon Kyle who discussed abbreviated and single component CBT for insomnia. Finally, Prof Espie presented on digital CBT-I.

REST e-learning programme: http://elearning.restproject.org.uk/

REST e-learning programme: http://elearning.restproject.org.uk/

The meeting was well attended by practitioners and academics from primary, community and mental health sectors of the health service. The CaHRU team are currently investigating the potential for community pharmacists to implement psychological treatment for insomnia instead of over-the-counter hypnotics in a feasibility study in Lincolnshire.

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Dr Zahid Asghar presents study results on influenza vaccine and reduced risk of stroke in New York

N0013781 Cerebral infarctDr Zahid Asghar recently attended the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) conference in New York City to present findings from ‘Influenza vaccination and risk of stroke: self-controlled case-series study’. This was an observational study of investigating the association between influenza vaccination and stroke led by Professor Niro Siriwardena, director of CaHRU, and Dr Carol Coupland, associate professor in statistics at the University of Nottingham.

Zahid@NAPCRG2014_750The study involved analysis of almost 18 thousand cases of stroke over a period of eight years from a general practice database, the Clinical Practice Research Datalink. The investigators found a significant reduction in risk of stroke up to 59 days following vaccination. The work follows publication of a case-control study earlier this year and involving almost 10,000 patients showing a 20% reduction in risk of stroke associated with flu vaccination together with previous studies conducted by Professor Siriwardena and his team showing a reduction in risk of heart attack associated with influenza vaccine.

NY2_750It is not known how influenza vaccination prevents heart attack or stroke. It might be because influenza has been shown to occur two to four weeks before these conditions and may trigger them in a proportion of cases or it might be due to immunological protection from the vaccine. There was worldwide interest in this area of research following the team’s study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.