GIRFT brought together a working group of clinicians from both primary and secondary care to develop the templates, to ensure they are helpful to both the specialists using them and the GPs receiving them. Effective deployment of Advice and Guidance enables primary care colleagues to access quicker responses from specialists and provide more streamlined care for patients.
Jeremy Davis, GIRFT’s clinical lead for adult ENT, said:
“The NHS has seen major changes to outpatient services in recent years, accelerated by adopting remote consultations and telemedicine during the pandemic. This guide provides advice and templates for a key aspect of outpatient services, Advice and Guidance (A&G), supporting GPs to provide optimum ENT support to patients closer to home, aided by guidance from specialist ENT teams.”
Su De, GIRFT’s clinical lead for paediatric ENT, added:
“A&G is crucial to efficiently performing outpatient services. This guide will support trusts to respond to primary care with best practice guidance that will enable relevant investigations and treatments to be implemented within a primary care setting, reassuring and empowering patients through shared decision-making, while minimising unnecessary and inefficient outpatient activity.”
A&G, also known as Specialist Advice Services, allows GPs to obtain advice from specialists in secondary care, which means patients get advice on their suspected condition more quickly than waiting to see a specialist in the outpatient department.
The GIRFT toolkit offers tips on making optimal use of A&G and includes templates which can be adapted in response to A&G requests for 24 common ENT conditions, including tinnitus, neck lumps and sleep apnoea.
The colour-coded templates aim to improve the timeliness and quality of responses back to GPs, allowing a personalised response which is tailored to the patient’s presentation, with the most important information clearly highlighted and scope for local processes and requirements to be flagged.
The templates for ENT conditions are the latest in a series GIRFT has developed, with others for children and young people, dermatology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, gynaecology, rheumatology and urology also available:
Advice and Guidance (A&G) Toolkits and Templates – Getting It Right First Time – Futures
