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Recognition of Patient Deterioration (Adults) Policy (P83)

The aim of this policy is to set the minimum standard and frequency for monitoring and recording adult patients’ vital signs in their own home, Minor Injuries Units, outpatient podiatric surgery and community hospital wards. The mismanagement of deterioration is a common area of systemic failure in avoidable patient death across the NHS (NHS Improvement, 2016, Hogan et al, 2012) and poor communication is a leading cause of adverse events in healthcare. The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) offers a common language to describe and communicate a patient’s acute illness severity by all healthcare professionals in all settings and is central to establishing a national pathway for improving the management of deterioration and sepsis (Inada-Kim and Nsutebu, 2018). This policy aims to increase survival among acutely unwell and deteriorating patients

Requesting and Managing Pathology Results within DCHS Community Hospital Wards SOP (S98)

The purpose of this Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is to outline the steps required to effectively manage the requesting, receiving, filing and actioning of all pathology results by either an electronic process or by a relevant paper-based system. Utilising an electronic system (such as ICE) enables pathology requests to be requested, reviewed and actioned electronically via the electronic patient record within TPP SystmOne. There are an estimated 1.12 billion pathology tests undertaken each year in England (NHS England, 2020) It is imperative a record of all pathology samples is accurately maintained to avoid patient harm and improve patient outcomes (WHO, 2021). The Care Quality Commission (2021) inspects the management of test results to ensure processes are robust, practice is safe and care is effective.

Enhanced Observation Policy (P61)

The purpose of this policy is to describe how supportive observations and engagement maximise people’s safety, minimise risk and initiate and build supportive therapeutic relationships. During times of increased distress or risk, a person may require a temporary period of an enhanced level of supportive engagement to maintain safety for him/her or others while the level of distress or risk is reduced. This will be achieved by establishing a good rapport with the person, promoting their coping skills and being aware of their individual needs/reasonable adjustments. This policy sets out evidence-based practice for individual clinicians, teams and services regarding the engagement and observations of patients being cared for in DCHS inpatient Older People Mental Health and Learning Disability Services only. Observation is seen as an integral part of person-centred treatment planning and contributes to the management and reduction of risk. All forms of observation however will have implications for the patients’ privacy and dignity. The level of observation for each person should be justified as reasonable and proportionate to the degree of risk they pose to either themselves or others and to enable their care needs to be safely met. The aim of The Policy is to provides clear evidence-based guidance for the observation of patients within Older People’s Mental Health and the Learning Disability Service. All persons cared for in Older People’s Mental Health and Learning disability clinical areas are observed by the staff.

STAY conversations

DCHS STAY conversations - managers guide. This is a management tool, not a formal process, aimed at supporting staff retention.

Research Governance Policy and Research Passport Process

The aim of this policy is to ensure that all research activity which is undertaken by our employees or conducted within our premises conforms to principles of good practice in the management and conduct of health and social care research that take account of legal requirements and other standards as set out in the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research (November 2017) UK-policy-framework-health-social-care-research

SOP for DCHS Foot Dressing Clinic (S149)

The DCHS Foot Dressing Clinic Standard Operating Procedure has been developed to support the administration of the clinics and the staff to facilitate equitable, safe, and effective management of all patients coming into this service.

SOP for the Archiving of Records.docx

Archiving of records

How do I extract an Emis Web prescribing report

Employee Personal File Contents Checklist - Sept 2023

Guidance on the types of records that should/could be held in an employee file

ACCESS TO RECORDS POLICY.docx

This policy details the procedures the Trust has adopted for dealing with applications for access to personal records held by Derbyshire Community Health Services, whether formal manual (for example, on paper) or computerised (such as within a clinical system) or information which could be classed as informal which may have been written within emails, text or recorded in Microsoft Teams, for example.