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Bevan Exemplar Project - Project team presented at last week's RCSLT Wales Hub Day.

A project team which is cutting waiting times for care home patients in Bridgend, needing access to multidisciplinary advice, has presented at this week's Royal College of Speech and Language Therapist (RCSLT) Wales Hub Day.

This Bevan Exemplar project, which recently won an Advancing Healthcare Award, is a new integrated way of providing swallowing, nutrition and medication management to care home residents to improve clinical outcomes, reduce unwarranted hospital admission and improve job satisfaction for health and social care staff.

Utilising the virtual Attend Anywhere platform, the service was made available to over 260 care home residents in the Bridgend area.  This is an integrated model that can be easily scaled up across Wales. 

Sheiladen Aquino, Clinical Lead Speech & Language Therapist, is the project lead at CTM. She said: “Due to the pressures left by COVID-19 we are seeing increased waiting times in the care home sector, particularly for residents with swallowing difficulties that can result in malnutrition, non-adherence to medication and unplanned hospital admission."

The project has three aims:

  • to provide multidisciplinary training to care home staff to manage risks while health services are recovering after the pandemic, 
  • to co-design an efficient integrated clinical pathway with multiple stakeholders

to explore comprehensive outcome measures to include efficiency, hospital avoidance and clinical outcomes

Sheiladen continued: “After training was provided as part of our project, care home staff improved their confidence in managing basic swallowing, nutrition and medication issues to effectively mitigate risks.

“They jointly conduct assessments using group video consultations via the Attend Anywhere online platform and collaboratively develop anticipatory care plans.

“We are seeing excellent results. A single referral method to access three specialist allied health professions has reduced GP input, eliminated multiple waitlists and resulted in 70% reduction in waiting times.

“Residents' nutrition level, medication adherence and quality of life have improved. The potential for unwarranted hospital admission was decreased by 50%.

“We also found that care home staff feel more valued and reported positive job satisfaction with this new way of working."

Lauren Edwards, CTM Executive Director of Therapies in Health Science also presented in the RCSLT event to share her leadership journey, learning and reflection. The RCSLT Wales event aimed to build leadership and learn more about the importance of partnerships and collaboration in the context of equality, diversity and inclusion.

In Photograph - Amber McCollum, Highly Specialist SLT; Sheiladen Aquino, Clinical Lead SLT; Kamini Gadhock, RCSLT CEO; Jodie Miller, SLT Associate Practitioner; Steve Jamieson, RCSLT CEO; Lucy Marland, Highly Specialised Care Home Lead Dietitian

 

14/03/2023