Colin Dunkley an SFH Consultant Paediatrician from Sherwood Forest Hospital (SFH) started using PKB in 2021 as part of his role as implementing ‘best practice epilepsy services’. He's current NHSE digital project developing open-source epilepsy data interoperability solutions.
Patient view
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About Epilepsy
1 in 200 children
Seizures 5% of ED and 5% of outpatient attendances
Average child 2.7 visits/year • 2/3 do well and ‘grow out of their epilepsy’ • ~50% have learning difficulties or disability, 30% have mental health difficulties
Priority long term condition within NHS plan
SFH Epilepsy service
Small core team
2 consultant paediatricians, 1 specialist nurse, 1 PPC
2 epilepsy clinics per week
250 children
Choosing to stay 50% ‘virtual’ via Attend Anywhere
Much activity in between ‘care episodes’: WhatsApp,
email, mobile
A service if ‘contactable’, is 20x more likely to be positively experienced (Seizure, 2018)
Epilepsy challenges to solve
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PKB is providing Paediatric Epilepsy Teams with a platform to improve the care of their patients. They are seeing the benefits of managing their care and keeping in contact with each other between appointment times, reducing the need to call, Whatsapp, email. Parents and carers have the tools and guidance within PKB to manage the child's condition at home, confident that support is there when needed.
This page will show how different epilepsy teams use PKB to improve their service using PKB capabilities.
Current problems
Unpredictable and not ‘one size fits all’
Video vital to diagnosis (sensitive, large file size, already on patient’s phones)
Need complex drug changes with consistency between patient, hospital, school, GP
Need dynamic individualised care planning for home and education
Easy to go wrong with unnecessary ED attendances, drug errors, SUDEP, misdiagnosis
Initial plan within the existing ICS contract
Build a 2 team
‘seizure’ and ‘epilepsy’ PKB solution
Initially SFH only
Basic build to get live
Agile improve, bolt-on and scale
Capture benefits
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Invite Process
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Children with epilepsy now have
PKB solution
Patient/carer can initiated messaging with the ability to send videos, files and documents
Digital individual care plans at every stage of treatment and before diagnosis
Patient videos shared and aid diagnosis
Epilepsy library with resources for patients and carers
Preclinic questionnaires
Seizure’ and ‘epilepsy’ diary platform
PKB Benefits
Patients are sent a questionnaire to fill in before the appointment, meaning reduced time during the appointment
Saving time and money
Patients have access to epilepsy information in the library
Patients have access to team resources, support and guidance
Reduced appointments infections
Share information digitally instantly
Team can triage messages and action
Use cases / Case Studies
Sherwood Forst Hospital
At Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Dr Colin Dunkley, Consultant Paediatrician, and the epilepsy team have been using PKB for young people with epilepsy, when inviting carers to see their record so that everyone involved is fully informed and seeing the same up-to-date information. Older young people can have direct independent access alongside their parents as they transition to adult care.
The team is using PKB to provide a quick mechanism for carers and/or patients to message the Epilepsy team (pre- and post-diagnosis), with the potential to securely send in patient seizure videos for review. Customisable treatment care plan templates are available, along with a tailor-made library of resources to support the patient and carers.
Workflow
Outcomes
Secure 2-way direct messaging with the epilepsy team retained within shared health record
Secure video submission
Repository for individualised patient information and care plans
Service wide customised library of resources
Seizure and symptom diaries
Automated appointment diary with Attend Anywhere links
Digital transition toward independence
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Clinical pathway
Share information digitally instantly
In between clinics team receive an email alert
Can look in PKB and see messages and reply
Can manage messages across the team, triage the info and decide who best in the team to help
See their whole record as is useful
Usage Stats
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Case Study
The Paediatric Epilepsy Team, which works across both Luton Children and Adults Community Health Services (provided by Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust) and Luton and Dunstable University Hospital (part of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), has been using PKB with their patients and families for a number of months.
The functionality they benefit from
Messaging – helping to communicate with carers and patients to provide a two-way conversation and allow carers and patients the ability to message in with any concerns or questions.
Care plans – there are two plans they are finding really helpful which are:
Seizure Diary Care Plan specifically for carers and patients to be able to describe their seizure activity.
All About Me Care Plan – this is used for carers and patients to document all the information they are regularly asked about on admission to hospital removing the need to answer the same questions repeatedly.
Videos – providing a secure way to send and store videos of a patient seizure and clinicians are able to easily access it when they need to.
Library – providing an extensive library of information for patients and carers, ensuring the most relevant information is available and is all in one place.
NHS England and NHS Improvement recently published a case study detailing the work of this project. Read the full case study here.
Key PKB features
Questionnaires
Patients can initiate a questionnaire by clicking Start Questionnaire on their homepage or directly within the NHS App. Once completed, the questionnaire can be sent to a professional or team.
Teams using the questionnaire tool can ensure the outcome of clinical reviews is recorded and the patient has a copy. Teams can also identify patients suitable for virtual appointments or pre-operative assessment questionnaires.
PKB's advanced questionnaire functionality
The features include:
Scoring and calculations
Branching, allowing patients to complete the parts of the questionnaire that are relevant to them
Coded fields questionnaires can be mapped to clinical codes
Patients can save drafts
Send questionnaires to patients who aren’t registered or already in your team
Questionnaire templates
Messaging
Patients have access to secure messaging (saving time on the phone).
Messaging across multi-care providers, including the parents/carers in the conversations
Share videos securely, parents/carers add doctors and nurses
Team can handover messages and bring different people into the message thread
The Admin team can triage messages. Either resolving or passing onto another speciality team
Team-based messaging allows teams to automatically receive secure messages and questionnaires as a group rather than as individuals
Library
Relevant leaflets in the library, (No more paper)
Meet the team videos / including admin staff - patients know the whole team
Videos by the team instructing parents/carers/patients about different aspects of epilepsy
National and local information and guidance
Hospital and trust information
Disease-specific information
Care plans
PKB have a care plan toolkit with examples of care plan templates used by teams. There is a process for teams to amend care plans or create new ones here. A selection of peri-operative care plans is below.
Seizure Diary:
A place to track and record symptoms/triggers and seizures to share with the team
A place to share the different types of seizures the child has in non-medical terminology
A place for clinicians to document their diagnoses of specific seizures
Medical History:
Detailed medical history with common questions parents/carers and patients are asked to repeat frequently
Capturing information once from parents/carers, patients, and clinicians
All about me:
Complex needs assessment
Ability to print out when going into hospital so the parents/carer don’t have to repeat
Contact:
Allows parents/carers and clinicians to record all contact details of the services the patient may have involved in their care
Emergency plan:
A place to share the current emergency care plan with parents/carers/patients and clinicians
A resource to parents on how to administer emergency medications
Epilepsy welcome care plan: sharing key information about the team and what to track
Journal
Details of specific seizures, including the time preceding a seizure. The nurses have commented that this detailed information wasn’t shared prior to PKB.
Upload seizure videos
Symptoms & Measurements
Tracking seizure triggers and types/frequency of seizures
Allows clinicians and parents/carers to see trends or patterns
Data
Appointments and appointment letters
Clinical and discharge letters
Comms
The team has a monthly newsletter that they started writing about PKB very early in the project.
The team discusses PKB with the parents/carers and patients at every opportunity, including prompting and reminding to enter info into PKB
Fortnightly parent/carer meetings with the team to discuss all things epilepsy, including PKB and how its usage has improved outcomes
Planning on doing face-to-face meetings with parents for comms and training
Further information
Epilepsy care plan template examples: three examples of care plans used by epilepsy pediatric teams
Paediatric Epilepsy teams using PKB: the benefits and features they use
Luton: Supporting children with Epilepsy: features they are utilising and the benefits and outcomes
Paediatric access: workflows for children 16 and under having access to their PKB record
Adding a parent or guardian: workflow for adding a p