Our ground-breaking partnership work to launch an integrated post-Covid support service has received national recognition.
Dr Caroline Gibson, clinical lead GP for CDDFT’s Post Covid Assessment Service and assistant psychologist (pictured at the bottom), presented the effectiveness of the approach taken to the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine conference in September.
The post-Covid service builds on the strength of established collaborations across health and care organisations in County Durham and Darlington forged under the shared commitment of the County Durham Care Partnership.
This has helped to bring together the multi-disciplinary, cross-organisational team required to meet the complexity and challenges of post-Covid diagnosis and treatment. Consisting of primary and secondary care medics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists and community practitioners, the team is able to create personalised care plans based on the patient’s needs, using a shared decision-making approach.
Dr Gibson said: “I am delighted that the work of the service has had this recognition at a national level. It was really well received and the people I spoke to were enthusiastic and positive about our integrative person-centred, holistic approach to care.
“Our service provides an individualised person-centred approach to patient care for patients with Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CF), post-COVID and other complex fatigue conditions, where patients can access a range of specialist support in one combined multi-disciplinary team.”
Post-COVID affects over 2 million people in the UK with three quarters of these experiencing adverse effects on their activities of daily life. Recognising the complex needs of these patients as post-Covid began to emerge, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation trust set up an assessment service in 2020.
In the last 3 years 2,821 patients have been referred to the post COVID service, with 1,524 initial medical assessments and 1,668 therapy assessments completed. This resulted in a total of 10,027 follow up appointments across all practitioners.
Read more on our post-Covid service.
