02/07/2024
The Western Trust Palliative Care Team led by Professor Max Watson hosted the First Co Creating Hope Conference at the Silverbirch Hotel, Omagh recently.
This event brought together clinicians, Western Trust and FODC Council leaders, palliative care staff, managers from primary care and older people’s services, service users, community and voluntary groups; Public Health Agency and others to collaborate on planning and supporting older people and to consider integration of services in the Omagh and Fermanagh locality into the future.
Speaking at the event Professor Max Watson, Consultant in Palliative Medicine at the Western Trust explained:
“We know that over the next five years we can expect the number of people requiring help with conditions associated with old age and frailty from our community to increase significantly with more than 40% over the age of 85 and 30% over the age of 65. There is significant pressures and difficulties that exist in our health service to meet the health and social care needs of our population and so we anticipate with growing demands those pressures will increase, not just because of numbers but because of workforce issues and finance limitations and rapidly advancing and expensive medical treatments.
“During the time of Covid we experienced many difficult things together. Things from which many of us will never fully recover because of what we and our families experienced and went through and the fear, grief and isolation felt by so many of our most vulnerable. But the COVID time also showed us something of our community about which we can be very proud and in particular the bravery, courage and community support that we saw with food and medicine deliveries and support for the elderly and vulnerable. We also saw a decrease in administration and paperwork as together we responded to what we as a community were facing and prioritised what was really important.
“We are facing a crisis of demographic inevitability with the numbers of frail and elderly set to rise, in a health and social care system with limited resources. Continuing to respond in the same way as we have done in the past will be inadequate.”
Co-creating Hope is about facing that very real challenging future and asking how we as patients, managers and clinicians could design different ways of delivering care to our frail, elderly and dying? How could we collaboratively ensure care which wouldn’t undermine the quality of service but which could maximise the assets available and allow us as patients, managers and clinicians to co-create ways of working ways which could stabilise quality provision.
Co Creating hope is about daring to explore new ways together so that together we can make proposals, share ideas build confidence and recapture hope in the face of cynicism, burnout, despondency and hopelessness.
Professor Watson added:
“We are not alone on this journey across the world. At a recent international integrated care conference in Belfast 1,200 delegates from all over the world highlighted this same need of working differently and linking these three vital cogs of service users, leaders and clinicians. There is another way of looking at the demographic challenge we are facing and instead of burden seeing opportunity. Seeing a population of over 65’s with so much to give, and benefit from that giving process. This conference is the start of a process in which you will be willing to engage. This integration has to be an integration of all the components and assets across the system
“We are very fortunate our guest speakers at this event have real concrete experience to share, Doctors Anna Folwell and Dan Harman from Hull. Dan and Anna are geriatricians who have been involved in creating an integrated care service for the elderly in the Jean Bishop centre potentially mimicking a lot of what we could be doing here in the Southern sector of the Western Trust. The Hull model for integrated care showcased a new and unique approach to health and care to support their frail and elderly population, through providing out of hospital care, reducing hospital admissions, enabling residents to keep fit, healthy and living independently in their own homes.”
Professor Watson provided examples of integrated care from across the world and from more locally to highlight and consider ways in which together service users, leaders, clinicians, community and voluntary groups can share expertise and experiences to help shape more efficient ways of delivering care and support to maximise our resources and ultimately foster hope for the future of care for the elderly in Omagh and Fermanagh area.
