Category: Community Care

Creating community spaces for patient wellbeing

How could the NHS better use its facilities to support social prescribing, holistic care and community resilience?

Source: Kings Fund

The NHS long-term plan has pledged to refer at least 900,000 people to social prescribing by 2023/24 to help improve people’s wellbeing; the fitter, healthier and more socially connected people are, the less likely it is they’ll need to access local GP or other health professionals. This research, based on a survey conducted with more than 2,000 people in England, shows that there’s also a strong appetite from the public for these services.

To read the long term plan click here.

Greenspaces

Compelling evidence shows that access to greenspaces really matters for our health

Now more than ever we are becoming more dependent on outdoor spaces to improve our health and wellbeing. Green environments are associated with reduced levels of depression, anxiety and fatigue and can enhance quality of life for both children and adults.

Access to good quality greenspaces, such as parks, allotments, woodlands and fields varies greatly on where we live. However, evidence suggests that the most economically deprived areas often have less available public greenspace, meaning people in those communities have fewer opportunities to reap the rewards.

The new report from PHE offers policy, practice and research recommendations. Click here to find out more.

Report

Recreating parks: securing the future of our urban green spaces

In this briefing paper, the cross-party think-tank states that parks and green spaces should be seen as a tool of health care in the same way as medicines and therapies. Giving the NHS a role in supporting parks and green spaces would allow doctors to make more use of social prescribing techniques where patients are told to take exercise and spend time outdoors to boost physical and mental health.

Strength and balance quality markers: Supporting improvement through audit

Public Health England, August 2019

Strength and balance exercise programmes are an important intervention for falls prevention. This report details of 7 quality markers for strength and balance exercise, suitable for use by local areas as criteria to help them carry out self-audits. With an intended audience of both local commissioning and strategic leads in England with a remit for falls, bone health and healthy ageing and providers involved with strength and balance falls prevention exercise, this document has been produced by Public Health England (PHE) with the National Falls Prevention Coordination Group (NFPCG) member organisations.

Click here to view the full report.

The effects and costs of home-based rehabilitation for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction: The REACH-HF multicentre randomized controlled trial

European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. https://doi.org/10.1177/2047487318806358
This NIHR-funded trial included 216 participants from four primary and secondary care centres across the UK.
Click here to access the full text article.

Men’s Health: Nurse-led Projects in the Community

Queen’s Nursing Institute, October 2018
This report aims to provide information and guidance to community nurses who want to work more effectively on men’s health. At its core is information about a range of men’s health and wellbeing projects that the QNI supported in 2017 with funding from the Burdett Trust for Nursing. The report also includes wider information about men’s health including details of additional information and support.
Click here to view the full report.

Admissions Prevention and Facilitated Discharge Service Evaluation

Applied Health and Wellbeing Partnership, September 2018
Over 70% of hospital bed days are occupied by emergency admissions, and over 80% of emergency admissions who stay for more than two weeks are patients aged over 65.  Older people are the main adult users of NHS health and social care services, at any one time occupying more than two thirds of acute hospital in-patient beds.  Understanding and preventing avoidable admissions is a pressing issue, especially with NHS budget restraints, an increasing ageing population, and the demand for care closer to home.
The Admissions Prevention and Facilitated Discharge service was developed in Wirral to reduce the incidence of hospital admissions and facilitate a timely supported discharge process for those admitted into hospital.  The service provides interventions such as increased packages of care within the patient’s home, rapid access to respite and twenty four hour care nursing beds, access to therapies, facilitation of early supported discharge from hospital into alternative community settings, and the service also supports patients into long term care placements where necessary. The service was evaluated to explore the views and experiences of healthcare professionals and family members of patients who had recently used the service.
Click here to view the full report.