ABSTRACT
IntroductionImplementation of new ways to deliver patient care requires organisational ‘sign-off’. Proposals made in 2014 for an online art therapy group for housebound patients met barriers of: insecurity of the online platform;concerns that patients lacked IT knowledge, skills and devices;limited staff time and no clear policy integrating the online intervention with a patient’s care package. In 2019 the project was agreed as a Quality Improvement (QI) pilot but halted when COVID-19 suspended out-patient services. Remote working with patients using MS Teams meant that previous guidance preventing video calls with patients was changed. The COVID-pandemic and lockdowns highlighted the value of online psychosocial support for patients isolated at home. Homeworking of staff paralleled patients’ experience;staff wellbeing during lockdown became an issue.AimsTo implement the QI pilot of online group art therapy with Marie Curie staff volunteers.MethodA total of 35 staff volunteered to test the format. The platform used was Microsoft Teams, qualified Art Therapists following professional and organisational guidelines facilitated. A Plan-Do-Study-Act approach allowed feedback from participants in one group to shape subsequent iterations. There were three PDSA cycles.ResultsTeams was an acceptable platform. MC staff volunteers and lay representative joined from across the UK. Participants identified key practical features to improve the format, reporting the intervention as personally supportive.ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic unlocked organisational barriers to delivering psychosocial support by videoconferencing. This QI pilot helped refine the art therapy group format, indicating a meaningful online therapeutic engagement was possible. It confirmed a protocol for a novel intervention ready to use within MC for service users and staff wellbeing.ImpactLearning from this project will inform innovations in psychosocial support for patients and staff as hybrid-virtual services develop for palliative care post-COVID-19. Its positive outcomes reinforce existing evidence that group online art therapy is helpful but requires organisational buy-in.
ABSTRACT
Self-management tools for people with chronic or persistent pain tend to focus on symptom reporting, treatment programmes or exercise and do not address barriers to work, facilitators of work ability, or workplace pain self-management strategies. We developed the Pain at Work (PAW) toolkit, an evidence-based digital toolkit to provide advice on how employees can self-manage their pain at work. In a collaborative-participatory design, 4-step Agile methodology (N = 452) was used to co-create the toolkit with healthcare professionals, employers and people with chronic or persistent pain. Step 1: stakeholder consultation event (n = 27) established content and format; Step 2: online survey with employees who have persistent pain (n = 274) showed employees fear disclosing their condition, and commonly report discrimination and lack of line manager support. Step 3: online employer survey (n = 107) showed employers rarely provide self-management materials or education around managing pain at work, occupational health recommendations for reasonable adjustments are not always actioned, and pain-related stigma is common. Step 4: Toolkit development integrated findings and recommendations from Steps 1-3, and iterative expert peer review was conducted (n = 40). The PAW toolkit provides (a) evidence-based guidelines and signposting around work-capacity advice and support; (b) self-management strategies around working with chronic or persistent pain, (c) promotion of healthy lifestyles, and quality of life at work; (d) advice on adjustments to working environments and workplace solutions to facilitate work participation.
ABSTRACT
The global crisis sparked collaboration between publishers and service providers to successfully address an immediate problem and demonstrated the possibility for future partnerships.Encouraging experts to join a reviewer pool and quickly review the preprint and journal submissions, we were able to publish COVID-19 research more quickly.The initiative confirmed little author uptake of inter-publisher journal transfer option.The collaboration showed wide consensus on open science practices which will ensure faster and more reliable research findings.