Group Discussion Review
Members of South Devon Osteopaths Ltd work in a 2 different NHS settings, including sole practice and practice with other health professionals – and use a range of different approaches. The group provides an opportunity to undertake CPD together at least once a month.
We use TM2 in NHS and I use Cliniko in private practice for recording data at the end of each consultation. This provides a resource to enable clinical audit data analysis to take place automatically, supporting reflection on practice.
Summary
With the SDO group meetings, we discuss hypothetical case histories and group discussion of learning points to inform application of the Osteopathic Practice standards
In the applications for recording data, relevant information are entered such as, age, gender, demographics, symptoms, average number of patient visits/ttt, post ttt advice are used as a tool to automatically analyse data for the purposes of clinical audit.
Concerns
Developing the trust to share different approaches to cases was important. We as a group also spoke about patient consent and how we should scribe this in our notes – we agreed upon “informed patient consent” covering the “informed” and “consent” especially.
What Did We Learn
We felt reassured exploring and explaining our approaches. However, many other learning points were also identified. These included:
Was It Useful?
Yes. To quote one participant: ‘We enjoyed being together – talking “Osteopathic shop”. We had strong personalities working together. I felt it was an achievement developing and trusting each other and not judging others. We developed support, explanation and sharing of practice. I thought it was very good for strengthening relationships for the future osteopathic network and peer group and for strengthening our approach to enhancement of practice and patient care.’
The group found that participants’ discussions covered aspects of all of the themes of the Osteopathic Practice Standards, including communication and patient partnership; knowledge, skills and performance; safety and quality in practice; and professionalism.
We would definitely do this again. Actually we have our next discussion in a months’ time over dinner. Participants will present their own cases and gather feedback on these in the same way in order to inform CPD. The group may also want to design its own templates, rather than using ones from the GOsC revalidation pilot, as it was felt these needed adapting slightly for the method used. I have decided to write my CPD as a blog.
