Challenges & objectives

Challenges

• Appointing an academic partner and appointing appropriate staff
• Developing the clinical decision unit as planned
• Assuring complete co-operation from medical staff changing rotas with support from general managers
• Gaining support from royal colleges regarding changing roles
• Gaining support from staff and professional groups in challenging boundaries.

Specific objectives of the project are:

• Achieving the principles set out in ‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say’ by providing an enhanced range of community alternatives to hospital admission which can be personalised to the needs of individual patients
• Extending and enhancing the roles of a wide variety of staff and redefining traditional professional boundaries
• To reduce avoidable non-elective admissions for the benefit of patients who may be treated nearer to home and to ensure that elective work within the acute hospital is not compromised by medical outliers and bed shortages
• To achieve a transformed system of health across the West Dorset community with a demonstrable and sustainable reduction in the workload of doctors in training and equivalent grades
• To redesign the patient pathway for ill children where advice at hospital or assessment is requested
• To fully engage and provide mentorship, training and support to emergency care practitioners and doctors providing out of hours services
• To commission an academic partner to develop a programme of skills assessments and competencies required delivering new patient pathways and implementing the training programme.

Delivering compliance

This pilot will be compliant with WTD 2009 by 1st August 2007. The pilot will commence in December 2006 and will be complete in September 2008.