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Better Healthcare Teams
The Extended Community Care Team will include GPs, community nurses, midwives and social workers. They will work in partnership with other specialists such as community mental health nurses, cancer care nurses and physiotherapists. These teams will usually be based in GP practices or community hospitals. However, they will be able to call in expertise from other agencies - for example, from housing, education or voluntary organisations.
Team working is also crucially important within Rural General Hospitals. Here, the teams will include doctors, nurses, therapists and other clinical support staff, with multi-skilled professionals being able to provide a majority of care within the local area. The medical team in Rural General Hospitals will include surgeons, physicians and anaesthetists and in some hospitals may be assisted by GPs with specialist knowledge. A pilot project has been agreed which will train a new type of doctor who combines the skills of a General Practitioner with specialist training in acute medicine. These doctors would be able to split their time between a GP surgery and the Rural General Hospital.
Support workers will also be trained to offer assistance to patients in hospital and at home. Among other things, they will help people being discharged from hospital, they will give support to young families and they will visit older people to make sure they are safe living at home.
For these new ways of working to be effective, it is vital that staff receive training that is designed to meet the needs of those who work in remote and rural areas. A new learning network, called the Remote and Rural Healthcare Alliance, has been set up to help people working in remote and rural areas to get access to the training they require. A number of new courses are likely to be offered which will extend the skills of healthcare professionals in remote and rural areas, including the possibility of a new degree level course. In addition, further actions will be taken to encourage doctors in training to specialise in remote and rural healthcare. For example, we are keen to ensure that working in rural areas is an attractive option and so we will make sure that those who choose to do so have access to similar training opportunities as those in larger towns and cities. Sometimes this will mean making sure that there are enough staff to cover the time away from the surgery and sometimes this will mean providing online learning opportunities.
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