Healthcare professionals are being encouraged to deliver a more personalised approach to care by Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood, who has published her fourth annual report: Personalising Realistic Medicine.
This builds on her previous reports and includes findings from a survey of nearly 2,500 health professionals about Realistic Medicine. It also includes recommendations from the Citizens’ Jury on Shared Decision Making, which was developed to support people and their families to engage at every level in health and social care.
The report outlines the need to reduce harm, waste and unwarranted variation in care across health boards as well as championing innovation and improvement. It also illustrates examples of good practice from across Scotland with contributions from world-leading experts in person-centred care.
Launching the report at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Dr Calderwood (above) said: “Everyone who works in health and social care wants to deliver the best possible care and treatment for the people they serve. However, simply recommending more tests, treatments and procedures does not always provide the best outcome for people, even if that care is delivered at the very highest level.
“We must be sure that we deliver the right care to the right people at the right time in the right place. Put simply, we must deliver better value care.
“That’s why building a personalised approach to care is the most important objective of Realistic Medicine. It will deliver the value we seek, better value for the people we care for and better value for our health and care system.
“We also must not lose sight of the fact that our workforce are our most valuable asset and we need to look after them too. We need to continue to provide compassionate leadership and create environments where our staff feel valued, respected and supported.
“Having witnessed the fantastic progress that’s been made over the last three years. I am convinced that now, more than ever, we can build a personalised approach to care together.”
Personalising Realistic Medicine
The Royal College of Midwives in Scotland have commented on the Annual Report, which includes a focus on the rise in premature births in Scotland.
Dr Mary Ross-Davie, Director for Scotland at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “This important report clearly sets out the pressing need to focus on reducing health inequalities at the very start of life, through promoting healthy lifestyles during pregnancy.
“There is a clear need to continue to focus on supporting more women to give up smoking before or during pregnancy and to support more women to enter pregnancy at a healthy weight and to manage their weight during pregnancy.
“Higher rates of smoking and obesity are closely linked to wider social and financial inequalities in Scotland. As a country there is much we can do, not just in maternity services, but much wider across society in other ways, such as education in schools, focusing on positive preconception care, advice and support, the reduction of poverty and social exclusion and a real focus on improving the health of everyone in our communities.
“We are seeing a rise in births to older mothers, who tend to experience more complications in pregnancy such as pre-term births. It is important that we continue to improve our maternity services to ensure that all women get the best possible care and support.
“In order to provide really excellent care that focuses on these public health issues and supports women to make healthy changes to their behaviour where needed, midwives need to have adequate time, training and resources.
“We also need to have adequately funded local support services that can provide wider support to women who need it, including specialist smoking cessation services, benefits and financial advice services, housing services and dieticians.
“We hope that this report will be followed by a good level of Government resources to make the aspiration for a healthier Scotland a reality.’
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