Keywords: identity; rural; coastal; innovation; primary and community care

Justification:

The delivery of health and care services in rural and coastal areas presents different challenges to our urban counterparts, although services are not frequently established to accommodate this. Identifying primary and community services in a rural or coastal area as a rural or coastal service is one step towards re-thinking how services might be delivered.
The requirement to innovate is one more challenge to over-burdened services. How might we engage practitioners in making real life changes?
Perhaps we can reflect on the very attributes, beliefs, values, and motivations that brought them to primary / community services in the first place. How do health and care professionals construct their self-image? What are the attributes, beliefs, motivations and values that HCPs in rural and coastal healthcare hold? How can these be embraced to address the challenges for service delivery in a post-Covid19 world?
In doing so, might we nurture a self-belief that piloting or trying digital and AI technologies in ways that re-imagine ways of working, smooth out pathways, improve the experience of the service, and lead to enhanced outcomes?

Objective:

To discuss how we can stimulate practitioners to re-imagine their identity, role and responsibilities in ways that can accomplish step-changes to primary and community service delivery in rural or coastal areas.
To consider what attributes rural HCPs have, what beliefs and motivations they hold, and how these can be used to innovate service delivery.

Organisation:

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust

Participation:

Primary care physicians, nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists; social care professionals

Expected outcomes:

Through a greater self-awareness of our professional identities, to generate practical actions to challenges faced by rural healthcare systems.
To have considered how health and care professionals can collaborate and innovate to delivery clinical excellence in an uncertain world.