Tailored Talks

Case Study- Tailored Talks

Background

Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland (CHSS) developed a new service, Hospital to Home (H2H) that uses a theoretical model for cognitive behavioural change within the 8 areas of wellness to support patient self-management, specifically for those affected by COVID-19.
Concurrently, NHS Lothian (NHSL) have developed a multidisciplinary care pathway to support severe COVID-19 survivors from Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission to discharge home. NHSL and CHSS have worked closely to integrate care and support pathways. As an integral part of this collaboration, CHSS and NHSL have also worked with Pogo-Studio (an Edinburgh based digital Start-up company) to develop a digital platform that provides personalized information, support, and advice to COVID-19 survivors and their carers/families.
This digital platform called Tailored Talks (TTs) provides personalised information, support and advice to COVID-19 ICU survivors and their families. These bite-sized talks cover a wide range of relevant issues from the time in ICU, through ward-based recovery, to recovering at home.  These 500 slides were produced by well over 20 clinicians and specialist from NHS Lothian and CHSS, including ICU doctors, psychiatrists and allied health professionals.
The application of the Tailored Talks platform is a critical enabler of the H2H pathway and was created to facilitate effective discharge, to support people and their families make the transition from ICU to home following a COVID diagnosis and to ensure that there is ongoing support as people learn to live with the longer-term impact of the virus.

In practice

The collaboration between the NHS Lothian Critical Care Recovery Service and H2H was launched in January 2021. Post ICU COVID-19 survivors at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) are provided with bespoke and relevant Tailored Talks according to their need and stage of journey. At hospital discharge patients are then referred on to the H2H service which provides a series of guided telephone calls focusing on physiological wellbeing, and social support to enable the effective application of TTs. Patients are then invited back to a newly established Critical Care Recovery clinic based at the RIE. This multidisciplinary clinic allows the patient to see the relevant healthcare professionals and affords another opportunity to provide relevant TTs.
The use of TTs has been positively received by COVID-19 ICU survivors and we have used their feedback to improve content, presentation, and accessibility. Patients have reported that they found it helpful to have personalised information at the appropriate stage in their journey and that this was available on their mobile device or computer. Accessibility of the talks is another positive benefit as patients have the opportunity to share their tailored information with family members.

The future

We want to make this combination of the digital resource of COVID Tailored Talks plus the enablement of H2H services available to as many patients with Long COVID as possible across Lothian. We also plan to work closely with patient groups, including COVID survivors, to ensure COVID TTs addresses people’s needs and specifically to identify any issues limiting access for certain people or groups.