I work out of the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence at Glasgow University and I look after our clinical trials research portfolio from cradle to grave. Working with clinicians, we identify areas that we want to improve, design a research study to do that, apply for funding then get ethical and regulatory approvals. We then approach patients to see if they will participate and help us in our research, which might involve trialling a new diagnostic test or a new drug or medical device for use in the treatment of cardiac disease or heart failure.
The whole point of our work is to make the patient process the best it can be in diagnosing and treating cardiac disease and heart failure.
The coronavirus pandemic made it very difficult to continue our work because a lot of what we do in our research involves patient interactions and we obviously had to minimise that to maintain patient safety.
We immediately changed how we worked and, initially, a lot of our research had to stop whilst we assessed risk to our patients. There were a lot of Government and MHRA guidelines that we could follow to continue our work to an extent, but to adapt and continue our research we needed access to a substantial area of space to continue seeing patients whilst maintaining their safety and The Louisa Jordan Hospital provided the perfect solution for us.
We started working from The Louisa Jordan Hospital in December, bringing together the diagnostic service for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Normally, if a patient’s GP thought they might have heart failure, they would be referred to hospital for different tests involving several appointments to pull all the results and information together to make a diagnosis, but here, we have been able to pull all the relevant professional teams to be based in the same place. Because of the expanse of physical space here, we were able to maintain social distancing which allowed us to see more patients on a daily basis and we were able to embed some research into the process and use research funding to pay for it, and as a result we have been able to reduce a 12-month waiting list for assessment – a result of the impact of dealing with coronavirus - back to 12 weeks.
The patients we see are so delighted with the service we have been able to run and provide here because we are able to give them a diagnosis and begin treatments and they’re not sitting at home worrying about what may or may not be wrong with them, and when they might get an appointment in the midst of the pandemic.
It was a big relief to be able to continue our work and see patients and what is a more efficient way for them and provides a better patient experience. We’re leaving The Louisa Jordan Hospital now, but we want to try and model this way of working to continue doing it at another location in Glasgow. We don’t know where that will be yet, but what we have shown is that we can pull people who were dispersed and working in different areas, which made it less convenient for patients who used the service, into a one stop facility where they can get everything they need taken care of at one appointment. We worried that patients might not want to come here if they were used to attending a different hospital, but they have been so happy to have their appointment and get everything dealt with on one trip.
Because we were also able to embed our research as well as seeing patients, we can look and see if there are new technologies that we can use to even further improve the patient care we want to deliver. At the moment, we are looking at eventually and hopefully using Artificial Intelligence to help us better interpret images from patient heart scans.
Being at The Louisa Jordan Hospital has been brilliant for us and the patients, and hopefully we will be able to replicate this model to continue working in this way but now that we are leaving, I will miss working here.
Glasgow Lives is shining a spotlight on frontline NHS workers who have spent the last year battling covid in city hospitals. On behalf of Glasgow Live staff and readers, we'd like to thank everyone involved for their tireless efforts.
