The Medical and Surgical Outcome Review Programme, delivered by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD), has published Learning Together, a review of the quality of care provided to adults with a learning disability who were admitted to hospital acutely unwell.
Recognising that a patient has a learning disability is a vital first step towards providing appropriate care
It includes calls for better use of terminology and improved record keeping. For example, 32.5% patients were described as having a learning difficulty rather than a learning disability, and the two terms were often used interchangeably. 89.7% of organisations reported using alerts or flags on electronic patient records, however, only 53.2% of patients had such alerts.
Other key findings relate to: reasonable adjustments for patients with a learning disability; the use of decision support tools to aid assessment of mental capacity; patient engagement; and equitable acute hospital learning disability services.
This report also contains five key recommendations for improvement:
- Accurately record a person’s identified learning disability
- Assess and implement reasonable adjustments for patients with a learning disability
- Use decision support tools to assess mental capacity in patients with a learning disability
- Consistently and continuously involve people with a learning disability in their care during a hospital admission
- Commission local learning disability support services to enable equitable access to care for patients with a learning disability who attend or who are admitted to hospital.
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