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W3C-validated CSS 2.14.9 The process: Delivery methods
The pilots sites identified five contributing factors they take into
account before deciding how and by whom IPs
will be prescribed and dispensed locally. These are:
- Type of care setting - primary, community and acute care
- Professionals involved – GPs, community teams, specialist nurses, consultants, librarians, information specialists
- Nature of condition and stages in condition management - where the pilot primarily treats the condition, i.e. in its more stable stages or in more complex, acute stages
- How patients prefer to receive the information they want – every patient prefers to receive information in different ways and in different formats
- Specific support needs of patients and carers such as specifically addressing inequalities and responding to any additional support and advice needs identified.
Clearly, therefore, you will need to make your information prescriptions available through appropriate delivery channels, such as face-to-face with professionals in a variety of settings, via the Internet, through telephone help-lines and by email. As well as being the most popular, face-to-face approaches are likely to be the most beneficial and most likely to support professionals who are proactively tackling health inequalities.
RNIB Leeds has updated its information directory for users and carers and reprinted it as a vibrant information resource, set out clearly in 16 point font size (large text). The directory is also available on an audio CD, formatted so that specific information can be found easily. Parts of the audio CD are also available through an automated free-phone number.
In Suffolk, a panel of clinicians, health librarians and social care professionals have compiled a list of web sites, books and DVDs along with contact details for organisations to add to their online service directory, Suffolk InfoLink, which is part of the Suffolk County Council website.
Their main web page has a range of headings to browse through which match the headings on the prescription template. The links are to good quality, validated sites and the library catalogue, with its free reservation service.
The pilot sites identified eight ways in which information prescriptions are prescribed and dispensed, corresponding to the eight models we set out earlier in this resource. You can refer to them by visiting section 2 (first steps: models). Prescribing and dispensing are closely linked, and clearly dependent on the delivery methods chosen: in some cases, there is no real purpose to distinguishing between them. In this resource, however, we have made the distinction between delivery, prescribing and dispensing. On the following pages we look more closely first at prescribing and then at dispensing.
On the next page: prescribing
