MFT
wouldn't have done before, to make
resources available where needed.
"A huge amount of the operational teams'
time is going into supporting the clinical
staff, seeing how far and how fast we can
go with change to support what they need
to do. That's brought a massive amount of
goodwill and we've seen it right across all
of the NHS, with teams helping out other
teams, even though people are tired."
One of the most obvious changes has
been implementing virtual consultations,
which happened very quickly despite the
challenges. "We were able to set up some
of the infrastructure and train clinicians on
how to use the portal before we had all of
the equipment, as some of it came behind
because there were delivery delays,"
Dr Devlin explains.
Despite this, clinicians adopted it
with ease, and it was rolled out in a
peer-to-peer way. Another benefit to
implementing telehealth was that it
forced MFT to confront issues with wifi
connectivity in parts of its buildings.
"People put up with the fact that they
don't have signal on their phone or
can't get emails in a certain part of the
building, but when you try to do a video
consultation all of a sudden you see how
problematic it can be. So it has flushed
some of these issues out."
Now that it's been implemented, she
believes telehealth is here to stay. "YoungerMagazine.com 203