Future-proofing the primary care workforce: A qualitative study of home visits by emergency care practitioners in the UK.

BACKGROUND: Broadening the skill-mix in general practice is advocated to build resilience into the primary care workforce. However, there is little understanding of how extended-scope practitioners from different disciplines, such as paramedicine and nursing, embed into roles traditionally ascribed to general practitioners (GPs). OBJECTIVES: This study sought to explore patients' and professionals' experiences of a primary care home visiting service delivered by emergency care practitioners (ECPs), in place of GPs; to determine positive impacts/unintended consequences and establish whether interdisciplinary working was achieved. METHODS: Three practices in England piloted an ECP (extended-scope practitioners with a paramedic or nursing background) home visiting service (November 2018-March 2019). Following the pilot, focus groups were conducted with each of the three primary healthcare teams (14 participants, including eight GPs), and one with ECPs (five participants) and nine individual patient interviews. Data were analysed using a modified framework approach. RESULTS: The impact of ECP home visiting on GP workload and patient care was perceived as positive by patients, GPs and ECPs. Initial preconceptions of GPs and patients about the ECP role and expertise, and reservations about the appropriacy of ECPs for home visiting, were perceived to have been overcome by the expertise and interpersonal skills of ECPs. Fostering a culture of collaboration between ECPs and GPs was instrumental to remodelling professional boundaries at the practice level. CONCLUSION: Broadening the skill-mix to incorporate extended-scope practitioners such as ECPs, to deliver primary care home visiting, presents an opportunity to increase resilience in the general practice workforce.

Implementation of the National Early Warning Score in UK care homes: a qualitative evaluation.

BACKGROUND: The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is a tool for identifying and responding to acute illness. When used in care homes, staff measure residents' vital signs and record them on a tablet computer, which calculates a NEWS to share with health services. This article outlines an evaluation of NEWS implementation in care homes across one clinical commissioning group area in northern England. AIM: To identify challenges to implementation of NEWS in care homes. DESIGN AND SETTING: Qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 15 staff members from six care homes, five health professionals, and one clinical commissioning group employee. METHOD: Interviews were intended to capture people's attitudes and experiences of using the intervention. Following an inductive thematic analysis, data were considered deductively against normalisation process theory constructs to identify the challenges and successes of implementing NEWS in care homes. RESULTS: Care home staff and other stakeholders acknowledged that NEWS could enhance the response to acute illness, improve communication with the NHS, and increase the confidence of care home staff. However, the implementation did not account for the complexity of either the intervention or the care home setting. Challenges to engagement included competing priorities, insufficient training, and shortcomings in communication. CONCLUSION: This evaluation highlights the need to involve care home staff and the primary care services that support them when developing and implementing interventions in care homes. The appropriateness and value of NEWS in non-acute settings requires ongoing monitoring.

Distribution of the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) in care home residents.

BACKGROUND: the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is a tool based on vital signs that aims to standardise detection of, and response to, clinical deterioration in adults. NEWS has been adopted in hospitals but not adapted for other settings. This study aimed to explore the feasibility of measuring the NEWS in care homes and describe the distribution of NEWS readings amongst care home residents. METHODS: descriptive analysis of all NEWS readings recorded in a 30-month period (2016-19) across 46 care homes in one Clinical Commissioning Group in England. Comparisons were made between measurements taken as a routine reading and those prompted by concern about acute illness. RESULTS: a total of 19,604 NEWS were recorded from 2,424 older adults (≥65 years; mean age 85). Median NEWS was 2. Two thirds (66%) of residents had a low NEWS (≤2), and 28% had a score of 0. Of the total NEWS readings, 6,277 (32%) were known to be routine readings and 2,256 (12%) were measured because of staff concerns. Median NEWS was 1 for routine and 2 for concern recordings. Overall, only 12% of NEWS were high (≥5), but a higher proportion were elevated when there were concerns about acute illness (18%), compared with routine recordings (7%). CONCLUSIONS: use of NEWS in care homes appears to be feasible. The majority of NEWS were not elevated, and the distribution of scores is consistent with other out-of-hospital settings. Further work is required to know if NEWS is triggering the most appropriate response and improving care home resident outcomes.

Who Should Deliver Primary Care in Long-term Care Facilities to Optimize Resident Outcomes? A Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVE: Across the world, health care for residents in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) is provided by a range of different professionals, and there is no consensus on which professional group(s) deliver the best outcomes for residents. The objective of this review is to investigate how the health outcomes of older adults in LTCFs vary according to which professional group(s) provides first-line medical care. DESIGN: A systematic review and narrative synthesis were performed. Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Scopus were searched for studies from high-income countries, of any design, published after 2000. Quality was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias and ROBINS-I tools. The exposure of interest was the professional group(s) involved in the delivery of first-line primary care. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Older adults living in LTCFs. MEASURES: The principal outcomes were unplanned transfer to hospital, prescribing quality, and mortality. RESULTS: Searches identified 10,532 citations after removing duplicates. Twenty-six publications (across 24 studies) met the inclusion criteria. A narrative synthesis was conducted of the 20 experimental and 4 observational studies, involving approximately 98,000 residents. Seven studies were set in the USA, 6 in Australia, 3 in Canada, 2 in New Zealand, and 6 in European countries. Interventions were varied, complex and multi-faceted. Nineteen interventional studies, including 4 randomized trials, involved the addition of a specialist practitioner, either a doctor or nurse, to supplement usual primary care. The most commonly reported outcomes were unplanned hospital transfer and prescribing quality. Interventions based on specialist nurses were associated with reductions in unplanned hospital transfers in 10 out of 12 publications. There was no consistent evidence of a positive impact of specialist doctor interventions on unplanned hospital transfers. However, specialist doctors were associated with improvements in prescribing quality in all 7 relevant studies. There was a paucity of evidence on the impact of specialist nurse interventions on prescribing, and of specialist practitioners on mortality, and no improvements were reported. CONCLUSIONS: Addition of specialist doctors or nurses to the first-line medical team has the potential to improve key health outcomes for residents in LTCFs.