Rammya Mathew's activity
In group: Primary Care
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Rammya Mathew posted an update in the group Primary Care 3 years, 8 months ago
Hi All.
I’ve been looking through the winning Qexchange projects for 2020. There seem to be very few winning projects that are centred around primary care – I do think it’s important for us, as a group, to explore the possible reasons for this. If anyone put forward a Q exchange idea, either in 2020 or previously, then I would be interested to hear your experience of having done so – whether successful or not. If you haven’t ever applied, I would also like to know what has stopped you from doing so. It’s important that we understand why primary care is not well represented in terms of winning these grants, so that we can try and improve this for future years. If you don’t feel comfortable posting in the group, I would be happy for you to privately message me either on here or by email: rammya.mathew@nhs.net. I can then feedback a collective response to the Qexchange team. Having briefly read through winning projects, I’ll also post some top tips about what ideas seem to gain traction – in case it’s helpful for 2021!
3 out of 6 of me Q Exchange ideas are associated with Primary Care. All three had very favourable and helpful comments from Q Members. I was not a member of this SIG at the time. Only one of the 3 was put forward for shortlisting and that was not selected. The NHS sponsor unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute. I am currently in discussion with three GPs and these could form the basis for Q Exchange ideas for the next round of funding.
Thanks for that Thomas. That is impressive that you managed to pitch 3 separate ideas. My team ran a dragons den – where we all presented ideas and voted on which ones we liked the most and/or thought were going to be the most successful. We did leave this a little late, which I think may have affected the quality of our final submissions. It was good learning for us however.
The 3 ideas can be viewed on my Q Community profile page.
I suspect there are a couple of reasons behind this:
– Hospitals / larger organisations are more likely to have established QI teams, and these are perhaps more used to putting bids together
– General practice is made up of many small organisations, and in my experience, many practices lack awareness of QI, or feel too busy to focus on any more than current day-to-day work.
How many GPs / Primary care staff are there within Q? Of the original 200 founding members, only 5 of us were GPs – it has improved since, but I would suspect that primary care is still under represented.
One last thought is that “Primary Care” mean different things to different people/groups – some focus on General Practice, others refer to anything out of hospital as being primary care.
Thanks Ian for your insights – it’s certainly valuable to have your perspective, having been one of the founding members. I can see from your post that at one point there were 200 members in this group, and this has since dropped. I think the primary care remit is a big one, and it’s certainly a tall order to try and appeal to everyone. It would be an easier option to narrow this down to general practice but given the direction of travel in terms of forming integrated care systems, I feel that QI work will increasingly cut across sectors, so we are probably well set up for what the future is likely to hold…
I am hoping to establish some links with the College, the deaneries and a group called PACT-GP (who are working on answering research questions in real-time, and also hoping to build a QI arm) – so that we can start feeding into working that others are doing. I think that if there is work people can get stuck into, this will help members feel like they are making a real contribution in the QI primary care space, and will give us all a better sense of purpose..
I started writing an idea but the amount of work needed means it is not possible for an ordinary jobbing GP doing this in home time. The bar was too high if you did not have an organsiation behind you.
I even find it hard to keep up with the Q message boards 😉
@rammya-mathew
I hope to pick up on a number of these themes in my presentation on 20th April.
Thanks @nigelhart – that reminds me that I need to post details of your presentation on this forum (which is already getting a lot of interest). Unfortunately there have been issues posting in this forum for the last couple of weeks, so I’m just catching up now, as it’s been sorted today.
Rammya, just to clarify my post above, there were just over 200 founding members of Q.
Of those only 5 were GPs.
(not 200 members of this SIG!)
Ah thanks Ian, that makes a lot more sense. @matthewmezey – do you by any chance have stats on what the current primary care Q membership is?