Queen’s Nursing Institute – Innovation / Best Practice Covid-19 SET Community Nursing ECHO Network
By admin
Up to March 2020 the South Eastern Trust Community Palliative Education Facilitators (CPEF) had been facilitating two separate monthly palliative ECHO sessions, one for district nursing staff and one for nursing home staff. When the COVID 19 pandemic led to lockdown they quickly recognized the ECHO model would be ideal as a way to offer support, share important information and provide relevant education to all nursing staff working in community settings. The CPEFs, working with the Neighbourhood District Nursing Coach, with the support of Project ECHO NI merged the 2 ECHO Networks. A programme, influenced by the participants’ suggestions, was developed and by April 2020 the new Covid-19 ECHO Network launched a weekly programme. These weekly sessions provided an opportunity for staff who were working in a lockdown situation to safely engage with other professionals, exchange examples of best practice and signpost each other to useful resources. This enabled them to continue to deliver care effectively and safely to their patients/residents. It became apparent that residential care home staff required similar support and so they too joined the ECHO network, with additional coaching from the CPEF’s to ease their introduction to the technology used. By the end of August, the ECHO Network had delivered 19 ECHO sessions and had an attendance figure of 680 persons during this time.
