ClinicSpeak: group clinics

Are you ready to share your consultation time other MSers? Have group clinics come of age? #ClinicSpeak #MSResearch #MSBlog

"If you work in the NHS you will understand when I say there is relentless pressure on us in terms of driving efficiency gains and improving, or changing, the way we practice neurology. At present our MS service is nurse-led with our clinical nurse specialists managing and coordinating the care of the MSers registered with our hospital. Our nurses are simply worked off their feet and with the influx of new referrals and the increasing complexity of managing DMTs their task list gets longer and longer. As a result we need to think of ways of improving the way we look after and follow our MSers."

"The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has just put out a call to develop and evaluate group clinics for managing chronic conditions. There is evidence that group clinics work, in particular in areas such as diabetes and hypertension. Do you think they can work in MS?"


"The idea that I am working on is to arrange group clinics to manage specific symptomatic problems that affect MSers. We would propose bringing together 8-10 MSers with the same problem, for example MS-related fatigue. We would envisage all attendees of the clinic completing a standardised questionnaire prior to the clinic to look into factors associated with MS-related fatigue and to rate the fatigue. The clinic will then be run by several healthcare professionals (HCPs) and will include a discussion about MS-related fatigue and how we investigate and manage the problem. As part of the clinic MSers can ask questions and discuss their problems with other MSers and the HCPs. The HCPs will then guide the group in terms of identifying what fatigue-related investigations need performing, if any, for example blood tests, sleep or bladder function studies in individual MSers. We would then discuss the management of fatigue and individual MSers can identify what is appropriate for them. The aim of the clinic would be to educate MSers about fatigue self-management. We would envisage a group clinic lasting much longer than an individual consultation with a neurologist or nurse specialist, possibly 90 minutes instead of the usual in-and-out follow-up consultation that lasts 10 minutes. The group clinic will be concluded by the development of individual investigation and care plans and followed by a follow-up clinic at a specific time-point in the future to assess whether or not the intervention(s) worked. We would envisage supporting the group clinic using a secure social networking platform so that attendees of the group clinic can communicate with each other so as to let each other know if the interventions are working and for them to share best practice amongst the group members. The primary aim of the group clinics would be to improve outcomes and quality of life MSers and to help improve the efficiency of the NHS. To assess the latter we would do qualitative research that will allow us to measure the success and.or failure of the experiment."

"Do you think Group clinics could work? Would you be interested in participating in group clinics?"



"Please feel free to help; any ideas would be welcome."

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