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This article from the diabetic foot journal vol 24 no 2 2021 discusses the adaptation of a foot clinic during the covid-19 pandemic, shifting to digital consultations and expanding services to all lower limb wounds. The authors, tricia tay, samantha haycocks, adam robinson, and naseer ahmad, detail the challenges faced and the benefits of this innovative approach, including closer collaboration between podiatrists, district nurses, and tissue viability nurses.
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Citation: Tay T, Haycocks S, Robinson A, Ahmad N (2021) The innovative delivery of an expanded foot clinic during the COVID- pandemic and beyond. The Diabetic Foot Journal 24(2): 1ā
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s the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, many healthcare services saw a temporary cessation of services and/or a shift to digital consultations (Chadwick et al, 2020). While wound care services were relatively protected from service closure, in the authorsā foot clinic in Salford, Greater Manchester, many of our frail, high- risk patients could not attend appointments because they were self-isolating. Therefore, the authors piloted the use of encrypted video consultation and used the mobile app WhatsApp. This allowed a community podiatrist or nurse to visit a patient in their home and gain a multidisciplinary team (MDT) opinion ( Figure 1 ). Patient consent was gathered before the consultation. This allowed safe social distancing of staff across sites and for patients to remain at home. These consultations involved history taking, examination and assessment, as well as counselling with appropriate safety-net advice (Jaly et al, 2020). Video augmented the consultation and enabled a MDT assessment. Patients with chronic limb- threatening ischaemia, severe infection or ulceration were invited to attend in-person appointments for potential life and limb preservation interventions. Those identified as āat-riskā during digital consultations were fast-tracked into tertiary care (Foot in Diabetes UK, 2020). These observations were echoed in a survey of podiatrists in the United States where there was a
significant increase in digital consultations and self- reported likelihood of using telecommunication after the pandemic (Neville et al, 2021). The authors believe digital consultations will remain although the software used will become more formalised. The pandemic also saw the implementation of an electronic wound care assessment tool ā the Salford Digital Wound Care Form. This replaced paper records in our centre and was integrated with the hospital-community electronic patient record. The resulting closer collaboration of wound care professionals, i.e. podiatrists, district nurses and tissue viability nurses, enabled team members to all use the same wound care form across community and hospital settings. This reduced repetition of assessments, facilitated communication and, with the reduction of paper waste, mitigated the spread of infection. Within this tool, health issues, allergies, intolerances and detailed information regarding plans for the wound were recorded. The assessment also included examination of lower-limb pulses, Doppler ultrasound signals and pressure indices. This, therefore, prevented duplication of vascular assessments and allowed faster clinical decision-making, e.g. initiation of compression. The assessment tool automatically calculated the risk scores that facilitated our audit ( Figure 2 ). These scores included the Site, Ischaemia, Neuropathy, Bacterial infection, Area and Depth (SINBAD) score and the Wound, Ischaemia and
Foot Infection (WIfI) classification (Monteiro- Soares et al, 2020). The Salford Digital Wound Care Form further comprises offloading and weight-bearing instructions, wound descriptions, including location, dimensions and signs of infection which, augmented by tissue sampling and microbiology advice, contribute to the development of the treatment and dressing plan. Should the patient fit the inclusion criteria for the National Diabetes Foot Care Audit, patient consent was gathered before adding to the audit (National Diabetes Audit, 2018). Although a formal evaluation of the new self care advice and practice has, as yet, not been undertaken,
self care as a concept was broadly welcomed by patients. However, as many of the authorsā patients were frail with mobility issues the degree to which self-care was delivered varied. Factors that affect healing were highlighted in the initial assessment; these included presence of peripheral vascular disease, poor nutrition, poor mobility, anaemia, diabetes, incontinence, immunosuppression, rheumatoid arthritis and smoking. The risk factors for diabetic foot disease include peripheral neuropathy, peripheral artery disease, previous foot ulcer, previous amputation, foot deformity and diabetes (Zhang et al, 2021). The National Diabetes Foot Care Audit noted that
Figure 1. An example of a multidisciplinary digital consultation with a podiatrist in a patientās home with opinions provided by a consultant podiatrist, diabetologist and vascular surgeon.
Figure 2. The Salford Digital Wound Care Form is used by podiatrists, tissue viability and community nurses and automatically calculates SINBAD and WIfI scores.
Authors Tricia Tay is Medical Student. Manchester Medical School, University of Manchester, UK; Samantha Haycocks is Consultant Podiatrist, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK; Adam Robinson is Consultant Endocrinologist, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK; Naseer Ahmad is Consultant Vascular Surgeon and Director Manchester Amputation Reduction Strategy (MARS)
Patients listed in the multidisciplinary foot clinic include those admitted to hospital and referred to the foot clinic, those arriving for their outpatient appointment and home visits by podiatrists on the day. A virtual review of hospitalised patients is conducted during the clinic. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients were triaged over the phone by podiatrists or the community team before being offered a face- to-face review. Patients were also invited if specialist scans were required to guide management, such as ultrasound, ankle-brachial pressure index or toe- pressure index, computed tomography angiography or diagnostic angiogram. The pandemic has allowed us to develop the traditional foot clinic into a more comprehensive lower-limb wound clinic. This clinic, managed by a consultant podiatrist now has āfuss-freeā access for all lower-limb wounds from tissue viability and district nursing colleagues. This opening up has fostered closer working across teams with the associated transfer of knowledge, skills and confidence allowing referral of only appropriate cases ( Figure 4 ).
The COVID-19 pandemic created challenges and opportunities for the delivery of healthcare. In our MDT, we began using digital consultation and a single online wound care form used by podiatry, tissue viability and community nurses, plus there was an integration and expansion of both podiatry and nursing skill sets and greater collaboration across teams for treating lower-limb wounds. This system- wide change has improved the care available to the 270,000 residents served by the teams by creating a culture of āfuss-freeā referrals. This has allowed us to remove a significant inequality in the system as now, all lower-limb wounds have the same access to services as diabetic foot ulcers. There are significant challenges ahead formalising this approach, however, working in a more integrated and digital way has allowed us, for now, to achieve many of the strategic objectives of the National Wound Care Strategy Programme. n
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Figure 4: The pre-COVID 19 pandemic weekly foot clinic, led by a consultant podiatrist, is now, a lower-limb clinic seeing all wounds and accepting referrals from community nursing colleagues.