Impact Overview

How iCon­nect has trans­formed Lake­side Healthcare’s approach to GP train­ing and become a vital part of the practice’s teach­ing strategy:

  • Made reflect­ing on prac­tice eas­i­er, quick­er and safer
  • Alle­vi­at­ed set-up, qual­i­ty and sound prob­lems to focus con­sul­ta­tion record­ings on improv­ing trainee practice
  • Over­come data pro­tec­tion issues and infor­ma­tion gov­er­nance risk with a secure, pass­word pro­tect­ed system
  • Improved trainee and train­er rela­tion­ships by enabling trainees to choose which con­sul­ta­tion videos they share
  • Reas­sured patients by being a less inva­sive option than oth­er technology
  • Offered pos­si­bil­i­ties for career-long pro­fes­sion­al learn­ing and support

 

How does iCon­nect work? Find out

 

 

Lakeside Healthcare

Lake­side Health­care in Northamp­ton­shire are using iCon­nect across their three surg­eries to sup­port the train­ing of GP spe­cial­ist trainees.

The system’s secure record­ing and video review has rev­o­lu­tionised Lakeside’s pre­vi­ous­ly tra­di­tion­al approach and become an essen­tial part of how the prac­tice deliv­ers teaching.

“I’m sur­prised not all surg­eries use it. As reg­is­trars, it’s much eas­i­er for us to record our videos than it was before iConnect.”

A modern approach to solving traditional problems

Pri­or to imple­ment­ing iCon­nect, trainees at Lake­side record­ed patient con­sul­tan­cies using tra­di­tion­al video cam­eras. This caused a few problems:

  • Uncer­tain­ty about the secu­ri­ty and stor­age of con­fi­den­tial patient data
  • A ses­sion could only be watched back on the camera’s small screen, which made group review difficult
  • For patient pri­va­cy, footage could not be tak­en away from prac­tice premis­es, stop­ping trainees from reflect­ing on con­sul­ta­tions at home
  • Dif­fi­cul­ty watch­ing videos back on the small cam­era screen, but due to data pro­tec­tion issues, record­ings had to be delet­ed from the cam­era and could not be downloaded

Look­ing to alle­vi­ate these issues and pro­vide an easy way for trainees to review their con­sul­ta­tions, Dr James Bur­den intro­duced iCon­nect at Lakeside.

“We want­ed a sys­tem that was going to be high qual­i­ty, good sound qual­i­ty, that enabled videos to be used very rou­tine­ly and reduced the amount of time it took train­ers to set-up. iCon­nect has done that in every aspect. It’s tak­en the stress of tech­nol­o­gy away from the record­ing of con­sul­ta­tions. It’s made record­ings able to be about learn­ing and how con­sul­ta­tions can be improved.”

Regular feedback and support

At Lake­side, Con­sul­ta­tion Obser­va­tion Tool (COT) meet­ings are held twice a week with the practice’s 6 trainee GPs. In prepa­ra­tion, the trainees use iCon­nect to record their patient con­sul­ta­tions and bring their videos to share, review and gain feed­back on in the group.

Now that the issues caused by Lakeside’s pre­vi­ous tech­nol­o­gy are no longer, trainees are bet­ter sup­port­ed; receiv­ing con­tex­tu­alised advice and feed­back from train­ers on a reg­u­lar basis. With the abil­i­ty to watch con­sul­ta­tions back in a group set­ting, they are also able to learn from each other.

“It’s a great teach­ing tool to enable trainees to reflect on their own con­sul­ta­tions. They can also either pick ran­dom cas­es, or what they feel to be their best or worst cas­es, to show to their train­er or their peer group.”

Building confidence and trust

Accord­ing to Dr Joy­mala Baner­jee, one of the practice’s train­ers, the fact that the trainee has a high lev­el of con­trol and can choose which of their con­sul­ta­tions are seen by the group, helps the rela­tion­ship between trainee and trainer.

As a result, the trainees are record­ing more con­sul­ta­tions than ever before and are get­ting more from the COT sessions.

Accord­ing to James: “iCon­nect has real­ly trans­formed how we teach in the prac­tice. Before, it would be one per­son watch­ing a record­ing of a con­sul­ta­tion with the stu­dent. Now, a trainee has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to record many con­sul­ta­tions and watch them at home, in a group set­ting at a dif­fer­ent site or in a group tuto­r­i­al with­in the practice.”

 

Patient consent and privacy

iCon­nect has removed the need for Lake­side to use tapes or SD cards con­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial patient infor­ma­tion. Of course, the prac­tice still has strict pro­to­cols as to how and when videos can be viewed, to pro­tect the pri­va­cy of patients. All patients are asked for per­mis­sion if a trainee wants to record a consultation.

James explains: “iCon­nect has solved the infor­ma­tion gov­er­nance risk by hav­ing a pass­word pro­tect­ed sys­tem. The data is much more secure­ly held now than it ever was before. It’s made us a lot more relaxed about any risk for the organisation.”

Impor­tant­ly for the GP and patient rela­tion­ship, iCon­nect doesn’t cre­ate an arti­fi­cial set­ting in the con­sul­ta­tion. “It seems a lot less inva­sive for the patients; they don’t see a cam­era point­ing in their face. Instead, the screen goes black and they don’t seem them­selves. I think they feel a lot less intim­i­dat­ed and a lot more relaxed.”

“It seems a lot less inva­sive for the patients; they don’t see a cam­era point­ing in their face. Instead, the screen goes black and they don’t see them­selves. I think they feel a lot less intim­i­dat­ed and a lot more relaxed.”

Career-long professional learning and support

In addi­tion to being a way for trainees to record con­sul­ta­tions, ST3 Reg­is­trar, Dr Munisa Patel, sees poten­tial for using iCon­nect with the COT sign off process. She explains: “The Forms tool could be real­ly use­ful to make the COT process even eas­i­er; cre­at­ing a form like the COT mark­ing sheet and using it to time-stamp­ing key moments in a con­sul­ta­tion video.”

Out­side of the COT ses­sions, Munisa is plan­ning to use iCon­nect through­out her jour­ney to becom­ing a qual­i­fied GP. For instance, to help her pre­pare for her upcom­ing CSA (clin­i­cal skills assess­ment) exam­i­na­tion: “I’ve been think­ing of record­ing my prac­tice cas­es at home, so I can watch it back myself and also get feed­back from oth­ers. It should be real­ly use­ful for that.”

She’s also excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties iCon­nect holds for sup­port­ing her through­out her career. James agrees there is room for Lakeside’s use of the sys­tem to grow: “At the moment, GPs don’t need to record their own con­sul­ta­tions for re-val­i­da­tion. But, they prob­a­bly should have peer review of their con­sul­ta­tions. It could also help them move their prac­tice forward.”

The future of GP training