£300,000 study aims to improve NHS care for kids
SICK and injured kids will take part in new research to improve future NHS care for children in Greater Manchester.
The £300,000 study is said to be the largest-ever to take place in the region, and could involve as many as 20,000 under 16s who are treated in emergency departments.
Funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), it will collect information on routine observations, such as heart rate, temperature and breathing rate.
This information will then be used to develop new guidelines for clinicians to help them decide if children should be admitted to hospital or discharged home, or signposted to a different service.
Hospitals taking part are the Royal Oldham, Fairfield General and Rochdale Infirmary.
All three are managed by The Northern Care Alliance, an NHS Group that incorporates Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
Professor Andrew Rowland, a consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine is leading the study.
He said: “It is vital that children and young peo- ple are treated in the most clinically appropriate environments and that systems are in place to identify those who need to be admitted and others who could be reassured and allowed home or who could access other services.
“Observations on things such as heart rate, temperature and breathing rate will help us develop a tool to help clinicians make decisions based on really strong evidence – the more children and young people who let us use their observations, the better the evidence will be.
“These sorts of tools and checklists are widely used in all areas of the NHS to make sure we’re consistent in our decision-making and take all factors into account.
“Nothing painful will be done to children and young people who participate and the collection of their observations is already part of the routine things we do when patients attend our Emergency Care settings.
“This research has been designed in partnership with families and I am grateful to all of them and the clinicians who have been involved.”
No personal information collected in the study will be made public but patients or parents who don’t wish the observations to be included can choose not to take part if they wish.