Project Echo team hold first external session

28 Aug 2019

Project ECHO encourages lifelong learning by building communities of practices where likeminded professionals can come together, via virtual clinics using multipoint videoconferencing technology. It is about improving care by moving knowledge and not patients, where everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. The format involves a teaching session delivered by a subject specialist and then real life anonymized case studies are discussed. The aim is to increase the professional's confidence in delivering care and to reduce any feelings of isolation that they may have.

Hi, I am Jayne Grant and I am the Lead for Project ECHO in CHAS.

The aim of Project ECHO in CHAS is to increase the awareness of the need for optimal care of children in Scotland with life limiting or life threatening conditions. Building and supporting communities of practice will hopefully increase the number of clinicians who feel competent in caring for children with life shortening conditions and improve the quality of care they are able to provide closer to home. There are over 15,000 babies, children and young people with palliative care needs and CHAS wants to work collaboratively to provide care and support to them.

The ECHO Team in CHAS have been working very hard at developing communities of practice and are very pleased that the first external session commenced on Wednesday 28 August at 1.30pm. This community is entitled Introduction to Paediatric Palliative Care and we were delighted to have 26 participants signed up to attend, with representation from seven health board.

The first topic was What is palliative care and who needs it? This introductory session was delivered by our medical director Dr Carragher. We were hugely excited to be launching the programme to our first cohort of professionals and looking forward to receiving their feedback. We are pleased to report that the session went extremely well - with the participants noting it was a "very good case presentation leading to good discussions around a very difficult situation" and was "good to hear other people's experiences"