2021 Annual Review: The Centre for Perioperative Care
Centre for Perioperative Care
CPOC has increased its partnerships over the last year, welcoming the College of Operating Department Practitioners and the Association for Perioperative Practice to its Board.
Improving care across the patient pathway
The Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) continues to stimulate and drive innovation across the healthcare system, whilst also significantly influencing the quality and strategic direction of UK perioperative practice.
CPOC has increased its partnerships over the last year, welcoming the College of Operating Department Practitioners (CODP) and the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) to its Board. CPOC also hosted its first Advisory Group engagement meeting in which 20 organisations came together to discuss the perioperative care agenda, increased alignment, collaboration and future relationships with CPOC.
CPOC is currently working with NHSEI on the development of NatSSIPs and, as part of NHSEI’s ‘My Planned Care’ programme, CPOC is working to build on the recommendations of the Preoperative Assessment and Optimisation guidance. This work is focused on pre-operative interventions – including screening and optimisation. Other work includes supporting the CQC in the development of core standards and quality metrics to facilitate inspection of perioperative care pathways, and with HEE to finalise the contract on the development of a perioperative care curriculum.
CPOC published Perioperative Care of People Living with Frailty, Perioperative Care of People with Diabetes Undergoing Surgery, and Guidance: SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 and timing of elective surgery.
CPOC will start to focus on the implementation of recommendations from our published guidelines through the development of implementation toolkits, quality improvement projects and working closely with our perioperative care leads as well as commissioning bodies.
As part of our Empowering Patients theme, CPOC launched its Shared Decision Making Hub, a series of resources that included Peter’s journey, an Example of Shared Decision Making, which has been very well received by patients and healthcare workers.
CPOC has been working closely with and supporting the elective recovery programme through its policy work.
Through its Harnessing Digital Technology theme, CPOC has been working closely with the Professional Records Standards Body on the development of an information standard for shared decision making. In addition, we are working with NHSEI and the NHS Transformation Directorate to clarify a perioperative care minimum dataset.
CPOC has been working closely with and supporting the elective recovery programme through its policy work. It has also been engaging with the National Treatment Centre Programme in Scotland and the Planned Care Programme in Wales. For more details of CPOC’s policy and engagement work, please see the policy section of this review.
As in our published RCoA Strategy 2022-27, through CPOC’s commitment to improving care across the patient pathway, we will continue to embed perioperative care across the healthcare system, as a means of improving the effective provision of care, addressing public health challenges and improving outcomes for patients by supporting the delivery of collaborative cross-disciplinary working.
