Another great year of learning provided by the CQE team
Pegasus Health’s Clinical Quality and Education (CQE) team continued to respond to primary care learning needs, through a rich education programme in the 2014/15 year.
Team leader Andrea Copeland says that more than 1100 Canterbury General Practitioners, practice nurses and community pharmacists were invited to attend each of six Small Group meetings held throughout the year. This year’s Small Group topics were heart failure; the placebo effect; frailty, falls and fractures; youth health; antibiotic resistance; and chronic back pain.
Small Group meetings are the core of the Pegasus Health education programme and are accredited by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand, and Nursing Council of New Zealand as contributing towards the requirements of Annual Practising Certificates for GPs, pharmacists and nurses.
Each Small Group has about 15 members. Meetings are interactive and involve evidence-informed discussions of about 60-90 minutes. The meetings are tailored for different professional groups and are peer-led. While CQE team members are registered health practitioners, they also call on the expertise of primary and secondary clinicians throughout Canterbury.
Andrea Copeland says Small Group topics are chosen as a result of requests from primary care teams and activity that indicates further education might be valuable. The Pegasus Health Knowledge Management Team supports the CQE team by scrutinising prescribing data, laboratory test ordering and other datasets. Their work helps to ensure topics covered by the CQE team are topical and relevant.
For example, analysis of local antibiotic dispensing prompted the CQE team to encourage GPs to note on a prescription, if it was only to be filled if a patient’s condition worsened. As well as minimising unnecessary use of antibiotics and helping to prevent antibiotic resistance, this ideally improves communication between GPs and pharmacists, ensures consistent messages are given to patients, and helps with continuity of patient care.
Andrea says the last year has largely been one of consolidation for CQE, after bringing the team up to capacity in 2014. “The addition of a Qualitative Analyst to the team has meant that we have put greater emphasis on evaluating the impact of the education we provide,” she says.
As well as delivering Small Group meetings, the team has organised some Large Group meetings for lecture-style learning and contributed to wider education planning for Pegasus Health staff and health professionals across the region. “Although our focus is on clinical issues, we also support the newly established Training and Education Guidance Group, which looks at broader education across Pegasus Health,” Andrea says.
In the last year, the CQE team has cast “a quality and evidence-based” eye over a number of courses including those on the Vulnerable Children’s Act, the Foundation Standard, and cultural competency.
CQE has relationships with the Canterbury Initiative, Canterbury Clinical Network, Canterbury Community Pharmacy Group, Nurse Maude and other organisations across the sector. The groups work together on some projects and liaise to avoid duplication or missing topics of importance for local health professionals.