RCP and SAM publish consultant toolkit for AMU

New toolkits have been published to deliver increased consultant care to acutely ill medical patients, by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) in collaboration with the Society of Acute Medicine (SAM).

The guidance will focus on changes to the organisation of care, working practices and medical rotas to ensure consultants are available to review patients on the acute medical unit (AMU) 12 hours a day.

Recommendations include seeing all newly admitted patients within a maximum of 6-8 hours and reviewed twice each day. Consultants should be free from other specialty, ward and management commitments when they are working on the AMU.

Dr Mark Temple, RCP acute care fellow, said: “AMUs together with emergency departments are the busiest clinical areas in the hospital. This toolkit provides important new guidance on working practices during the consultant shift on the AMU and the number of patients a single consultant can be expected to review during this shift.

“Hospitals struggling to cope with increasing emergency admissions, can use the toolkit to reconfigure acute medical services and ensure that daily consultant review is integral to the provision of high quality care to patients with acute illness.”

Dr Chris Roseveare, president of SAM, said: “The presence of a consultant on the acute medical unit is essential to ensure high quality, safe, effective patient care; this toolkit is the first document which provides practical solutions to enable this to be achieved, for a minimum of 12 hours per day, seven days per week.

“Clinicians and managers now have the opportunity to calculate the workforce which they will require to deliver this, based on factors such as the size and configuration of the AMU, as well as the numbers of patients admitted on a daily basis. This is a landmark in acute medical care and represents a major step forward for the treatment of patients admitted to hospital in an emergency.”

The guidance is at: www.rcplondon.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/acute-care-toolkit-4.pdf

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