Digital Care Home: Connecting Care Workshop

Catherine McShane, Dietitian, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust

Catherine is a specialist dietitian with a career spanning 20 years. Initially specialising in care of the elderly in both the acute and community setting, more recently Catherine has been involved in developing training, resources and guidelines for health and social care staff to identify, treat and monitor undernutrition in the community. As a result of frustrations of not being able to monitor patients as regularly as needed, she sought a solution to improve the dietetic care that could be provided to patients at risk of undernutrition. This has led to the creation of NHS Health Call Undernutrition. Catherine has been instrumental in clinically leading the development, implementation and evaluation of this and is now supporting the development of further digital solutions for health care related issues.

@ctmcshane2000  @CDDFTNHS

 

Dave Belshaw, Health Programme Manager, Academic Health Science Network North East and North Cumbria

Dave qualified as a Registered Mental Health Nurse (RMN) in 1990 and went on to hold a variety of clinical roles and management positions within the Northumberland locality, going on to operationally manage primary care focused community teams, as well as Crisis and Home Treatment teams and Deliberate Self Harm teams.

Dave moved on to work in project management in the Durham locality, establishing Access, Booking and Choice pilots and also a new Crisis Team, before a regional service improvement role at the Northern Centre for Mental Health and then establishing a service improvement team for the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) and then the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) across the North East and Yorkshire and Humber, successfully delivering improvement initiatives across the region.

He was part of the core development team, and eventually managed, the Mental Health First Aid programme nationally for the Department of Health before establishing it as a social enterprise. Following this Dave became head of the North East Regional Development Unit (NEMHDU) prior to establishing it as successful social enterprise for 7 years as its Chief Executive.

Dave has a Master’s in Public Administration as well as qualifications in complex programme management, consultancy and in 2011 completed his ‘back to practice’ programme to re-register as an RMN. He has experience in complex programme management, organisational leadership and with a particular emphasis on understanding the importance of stakeholder and relationship management.

@AHSN_NENC

 

Sandra Smyth, TAPS Team Lead, Durham Dales Health Federation

Sandra is the team lead for Dales 3 District Nursing Team in Barnard Castle, the pilot site for the Health Call launch.

After working in the NHS in Sunderland for 11 years, before joining the HM Forces (Army) as a Queen Alexandra Nursing Officer (QARANC). After leaving the Army she taught across a number of healthcare programs of learning, such as NVQ’s and Modern Apprenticeships. This included teaching and training in care homes.

Having over 30 years nursing experience and witnessing the shift towards more acute care moving into the community. Patients prefer to be cared for at home and Health Call, initially in care homes, is allowing this for patients. The patients have a degree of health surveillance which monitors their general well-being and will alert to slow decline in health.

Sandra has have taught in many different health settings and it is satisfying to see how the care home staff are flourishing in their newly adopted skills and knowledge. They receive initial training on how to capture baseline observations and how to upload these to the Health Call portal. They enjoy the fact that they are more engaged in the overall healthcare of their residents.  This allows a closer collaboration of services, ultimately resulting in best patient outcomes.

@sanrgn  @CDDFTNHS

 

Sarah Douglas, Project Manager – Supporting the Provider Market, Durham County Council

Sarah Douglas leads on the innovative Supporting the Provider Market project for Durham County Council, working closely with local Partners and Providers to improve services for the people of County Durham and support both market stability and sustainability. As part of that project, she has successfully launched the County Durham Care Academy which is delivering key recruitment and training support to adult social care Providers. Sarah’s local work on implementing Health Call Digital Care Home together with County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has resulted in both regional and national recognition for the project. As a Commissioner of both health and social care services in County Durham for over 15 years, she has led on a number of new and high profile services, which have had significant positive impact for service delivery within the County.

@SarahDouglas79  @DurhamCouncil