Category Archives: Events

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CaHRU team at Imperial College London for international partnership to improve primary care with South Asia

icl_cahruMembers of the Community and Health Research Unit, Dr Stephanie Armstrong, Dr Murray Smith, Professor Graham Law and Professor Niro Siriwardena attended a week long meeting with colleagues from Imperial College London (Professor Azeem Majeed, Dr Matthew Harris, Dr Yasser Bhatti, Dr Mala Rao, Professor Peter Childs and Professor James Barlow), Sri Lanka (Drs Rivaiz Haniffa and Dr Sajeeva Ranaweera, University of Colombo), Pakistan (Dr Asim Mahmood of Integrated Health Services) and Bangladesh (Dr Foysol Chowdhury of BRAC) to develop a collaboration exploring frugal innovation and quality improvement in primary care in middle income countries in South Asia.

The meeting consisted of seminars, presentations and discussions on the current systems of primary care in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, other countries such as Brazil, and the United Kingdom, those systems being developed to improve care, how we could introduce frugal low cost innovations to enhance care in low and middle income countries and how these innovations could be introduced into the UK through ‘reverse innovation’. There were also presentations on research ethics and intellectual property.

taj2During the week’s meeting professor Siriwardena was invited to give a presentation on his work on quality improvement, specifically on ‘Quality Improvement Collaboratives: theory, design and effects’. This summarised work on three large scale QICs, Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST), the Ambulance Services Cardiovascular Quality Initiative (ASCQI) and Scaling up PINCER, a pharmacist intervention to reduce clinically important prescribing errors in primary care, all funded by the Health Foundation and the last also co-funded by East Midlands Academic Health Science network. The talk developed the idea that collaboratives had different purposes and that syntheses should take this into account.

The meeting finished with partners agreeing to work together in future, support each other on the need to develop primary care and to implement frugal innovations as part of quality improvement initiatives in the countries involved.

By Professor Niro Siriwardena

[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2018/03/QICs_ICSiriwardena.pdf” width=”660″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

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CaHRU attends Trent Regional Society for Academic Primary Care Conference

sapcMembers of the Community and Health Research Unit (CaHRU) recently attended the Trent Regional SAPC Spring Conference (13 March 2018) organised by the University of Sheffield. The conference included delegates mainly from the Universities of Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester and Sheffield, as well as professionals from all over our region interested in primary care research and education.

After a very warm welcome from Professor Chris Burton, Dr Austin O’Carroll gave a very inspiring and thought-provoking keynote speech on his work with marginalised groups (especially homeless people) and their challenges zahidwith accessing healthcare. Delegates then had the opportunity to attend oral presentations of posters and a variety of longer 15′ oral presentations. Dr Zahid Asghar of CaHRU also gave a very well-received oral presentation on his study, entitled “Exploring factors increasing Paramedics’ likelihood of administering Analgesia in pre-hospital pain”. After a much-needed lunch, delegates were split into three smaller workshop groups looking into three distinct subjects: “Resources for grant-writing” (Paul Leighton), “Introducing community/voluntary sector placements to Undergraduate Medical Education” (Joanne Thompson), and “Patient and Public Involvement at the Deep End Yorkshire and Humber: How should we involve patients EMAS - A&E 7_750with our research” (Liz Walton). The day came to an end with a great key note speech by Professor Robbie Foy on a ‘real world’ trial of a strategy to promote evidence-based primary care.

Delegates, while waving goodbye to the wonderful St Mary’s Conference Centre – an old church converted into a conference centre- promised to meet again this July in London for the Annual Conference of the Society for Academic Primary Care.

By Despina Laparidou

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CaHRU contributes to Research and Innovation conference

elcock_lpft Professor Niro Siriwardena was a keynote speaker at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s (LPFT) Research and Innovation Conference which took place at Branston Hall on 8 March 2018. The conference was chaired by Dr Sue Elcock, medical director at LPFT. The event, which was attended by over 100 delegates, included keynote talks from Chris Roberts, Alzheimer’s Society Ambassador, Professor Belinda Lennox of the University of Oxford and Dr Joanna Moncrieff of University College London.

chrisroberts_lpftChris Roberts, who himself has dementia and his wife, Jayne Goodrick spoke on ‘Join dementia research ‘handing out hope’ and the importance of those with the condition and their families engaging with studies into the condition as a means of providing possibilities for future treatment and care. Professor Cox spoke on her ground-breaking work on psychosis and immunity on ‘Could psychosis be a treatable immune disorder?’ This was followed by workshops on ‘How to make a first step into a clinical academic career’, ‘Taking a stab at research’, ‘How research improved practice’ and ‘Falls prevention in care homes’.

 

niro_lpftAfter lunch there followed LPFT’s innovation bid winners and how they had developed their ideas. Another example of ‘How to develop your ideas into research’ and the importance of collaboration between the NHS and the University of Lincoln was presented by Dr Amulya Nadkarni (consultant in child and adolescent mental health), Sophie Keogh (undertaking a research secondment at the Lincoln Institute for Health), Prof Siriwardena of CaHRU. They discussed how the collaboration began, how the ideas for research emerged, progress on current work on a systematic review of ‘Effects of non-pharmacological interventions for insomnia in children with Autistic Spectrum Condition, and how this was planned to lead to future work.

The final talk was from Dr Moncrieff on ‘Get involved – research into reducing or stopping antipsychotic medication’, how drugs could we withdrawn in some patients on these drugs and the programme of research which included a randomised controlled trial of antipsychotic withdrawal.

By Prof Niro Siriwardena

 

 

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CaHRU/LIH seminar: Quality Improvement Collaboratives – theory design and effects

CaHRU_logotypeThe latest in the CaHRU and Lincoln Institute for Health Improvement Science and Research Methods seminar series was given by Professor Siriwardena on ‘Quality Improvement Collaboratives (QICs): theory design and effects on 28 February 2018. The CaHRU team have led three large scale collaboratives over the past 12 years, including Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST), the Ambulance Services Cardiovascular Quality Initiative (ASCQI) and most recently Scaling up PINCER (a pharmacist and information technology intervention to reduce potential clinically important prescribing errors in general practice.

niro2QICs are an organised, multifaceted approach to quality improvement involving five essential features: a specified topic; clinical experts and experts in quality improvement provide ideas and support for improvement; multi-professional teams from multiple sites participate; using a model for improvement (measurement, change, feedback); and a collaborative process involves series of structured activities. The talk described how QICs have been used to implement healthcare interventions at scale and referred to a recent systematic review suggesting that over 4 out of 5 reported improvement in one or more outcomes although the quality of studies was variably poor.

QICs were described in terms of their common features: a logic model and theory of change; the complex (pragmatic) contexts of the intervention, setting and participants; and the variation in effects and changes that the intervention can or will undergo during the process of the collaborative. It was proposed that there were different types of collaborative based on their purpose which could be for intervention development, increasing reliability of evidence based processes, or scaling up evidence based complex interventions. It was argued that reviews of QICs should consider these different purposes when describing the outcomes and effects of QICs.

By Professor Niro Siriwardena[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2018/03/QICs_Siriwardena.pdf” width=”660″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]