853 Disseminating new clinical guidance during a pandemic

Published Date: 17th August 2022

Publication Authors: Cocks Z

Aims
Establishing an innovative method of disseminating a new bronchiolitis guideline in a tertiary paediatric hospital.

The ripple effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown periods on the paediatric population has been far reaching.1 With isolation drawing to a close, we saw a resurgence of patients presenting to hospital with other respiratory tract infections, including bronchiolitis, across the world.2 3 The median age of affected children also rose – attributed to the infection of older RSV-naïve children.2

In Autumn 2021, as social restrictions were lifted in the UK and children returned to schools and nurseries, our UK tertiary centre was seeing a rising number of admissions with bronchiolitis. It was imperative that our clinical practice in general paediatrics aligned with the most up-to-date evidence base, as outlined in the trust’s new bronchiolitis guideline.

With social distancing of staff prevailing in our hospitals, we looked to novel ways to disseminate current best practice to our colleagues.

Methods
A team of senior nursing and medical staff formed a focus group to explore ways of circulating this information effectively. We formulated an infographic, highlighting key points in our management of bronchiolitis, from the new guideline – figure 1. We created a personalised QR code to allow staff to access the full guideline by scanning our poster.

Multiple iterations were discussed within the team, in both face-to-face and online meetings.

The final draft was printed on A3, laminated and put up throughout clinical and non-clinical areas within the hospital. We worked alongside our IT colleagues to launch the poster as a screensaver on all trust computers and to share via hospital-wide communications emails.

To measure the effectiveness of the infographic, we captured real-time guideline downloads via the dynamic QR code, for a month following launch.

Results
Verbal feedback from clinical staff was very positive. From when we launched the infographic on multiple platforms throughout the hospital on 18th October 2021, to the 17th November 2021, we had 67 downloads of our guideline, with a peak on day one

Whilst these numbers reflect how many individuals downloaded the full guideline, it doesn’t capture those who read and saw the poster without scanning the QR code.

Conclusion
We have demonstrated a successful technique of disseminating new clinical guidance.

We will need further audit data to see if clinical practice has changed since the launch of the new guideline and hence if we are meeting the standard for our general paediatric patients, during this season’s surge in bronchiolitis.

 

Cocks, Z; O'Connor, M; Barrett, C; Kamarova, H. (2022). 853 Disseminating new clinical guidance during a pandemic. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 107(Suppl 2), pp.A115-A116. [Online]. Available at: https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/Suppl_2/A115 [Accessed 22 December 2022]

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