CPOC launches three new projects to set out a vision for perioperative care

Published: 13/03/2020

Every patient’s journey should be along a coordinated pathway delivering the right services in a coordinated way with primary, secondary and community care staff are all involved – providing patient focused, high-quality care with better outcomes, better experiences, and more efficient use of resources.

This is the perioperative approach – patients empowered through shared decision-making and personalised care, with clinicians and professionals across the system working together. And it’s an approach vital for the 250,000 high-risk surgical patients who need extra care every year to ensure they have the best possible recovery. That’s why CPOC is launching three new projects which will aim to make the case and set out a vision for perioperative care.

Our Aims

Over the coming year, we’ll aim to:

  1. identify the emerging issues that matter most to surgical patients, understand the economic case for perioperative care and the impact on patient flow, local health systems and economies, and impact in addressing inequalities in health
  2. explore how we can encourage Integrated Care Systems and Partnerships, Primary Care Networks and devolved equivalents – to embed a perioperative approach, and build the vital  bridge between secondary, surgical care, and primary, community and social care
  3. map the progress made in developing multidisciplinary perioperative teams, and understand the multidisciplinary perioperative team in delivering integrated, patient-centred care – aligned with the NHS’s £4.5bn investment in expanded community teams, and commitment to develop resources supporting local health system leaders to create high-performing multidisciplinary teams.

Through our work, we’ll draw the sector and patients together around a series of campaigning priorities and clear, realistic recommendations for the future.

Reaching out to you

During the projects we’ll reach out to you through a series of workshops, surveys, focus groups and discussion papers. We want to hear your thoughts, learn from your experiences, share our emerging evidence and create, together, a strong case for perioperative care. If you’d like to get involved, please join our informal ‘sounding board’, to:

  • give us your views by taking part in surveys, feeding back on draft reports, testing our messaging, and helping plug evidence gaps
  • champion our work on social media and to your personal and professional networks. We’ll regularly update you using #PerioperativeCare – retweets welcome!
  • blog for us, sharing your experiences, reflecting on our findings, and promoting our work
  • attend any workshops we may host as part of the consultation work for this project (please note that workshops will now take place virtually)

Please email advocacy@rcoa.ac.uk if you’re interested. Thank you in advance for any help you’re able to give!

As the project develops you will be able to find regular updates on our developing work here.

You can read more about the perioperative approach in a new op-ed published today in the British Medical Journal.

About us

CPOC is a cross-specialty partnership dedicated to the promotion, advancement and development of perioperative care for patient benefit; and partnership of the Royal Colleges of Child and Paediatric Health, Physicians, Surgeons, General Practitioners, Anaesthetists and Nursing, and the Association of Anaesthetists.

We are committed to working collaboratively with local and national partners across the health and social care system throughout the UK.