A second research article about the work of Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership (ACHSCP) has been published in the space of just two months in a prestigious journal with an international reach.
Earlier this year, the influential journal AIMS Public Health published a paper on the INCA neighbourhood care model by ACHSCP Research & Evaluation Manager Dr Calum Leask and Senior Public Health Practitioner Andrea Gilmartin. Now a further article – this time on the West Visiting scheme, by Dr Leask and Transformation Programme Manager Heather Tennant – has been published in the internationally renowned Journal of Research in Nursing.
‘Evaluation of an unscheduled care model delivered by advanced nurse practitioners in a primary-care setting’ puts the spotlight on one of the highest-profile innovations developed since the Partnership’s inception.
The West Visiting Service has seen Advanced Nurse Practitioners based within G-MED delivering unscheduled home visits on behalf of GPs in the west of the city. The strategy aims to reduce pressure on primary care and GPs in particular.
The research article evaluates the feasibility of the approach, which in its first six months saw 239 accepted referrals totalling 106.55 hours of care. GPs were very satisfied with the service, giving it an average score of 90%, and said the benefits including reductions practice staff stress and more time to see other patients.
Options were also identified to develop the service further, including the creation of a multi-disciplinary unscheduled care team to ensure patients are visited by the most appropriate professional.
The project has already gained national attention and has been shared at a variety of events, including the inaugural Health and Social Care Integration Conference last December and the NHS Scotland Event in May this year.
Partnership Chief Officer Sandra Ross said: “We should all be very proud that Calum and Heather have had their paper published in such an influential publication, which is read by professionals right across the world.
“This is the second time this year that we have been able to showcase our great work in a peer-reviewed journal with an international audience. Our Partnership is doing some wonderful ground-breaking practice and I am delighted that we are sharing it with a global audience.”
The Journal of Research in Nursing is part of SAGE Publishing, a global organisation releasing more than 1,000 journals a year. It publishes original high-quality research to support nursing and healthcare professionals. Its editors-in-chief are Professor Andree Le May, Emeritus Professor of Nursing at the University of Southampton, and Dr Ann McMahon, Honorary Professor at Plymouth University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow.
The article is accessible at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1744987119852380. Those without institutional access can request a pdf of the article by emailing calum.leask@nhs.net