Service development Resources

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This is the third and final article in the Long Covid (LC) series, which presents and discusses the ongoing development of the Leeds Long Covid Community Rehabilitation Service (LLCCRS), highlighting the digital interventions used to assist with symptom management
and barriers to overcome to achieve this, the importance of involving people with LC (PwLC) within service development as well as two of the most recent service evaluations of new digital interventions — virtual group assessments (VGA), and Covid-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Scale (C19 YRS) mobile application (app).

This article, the second in a three-part series on Long Covid (LC), focuses on how one community-based NHS LC clinic developed and now delivers a 10-week group-based virtual rehabilitation programme (VRP), which aims to provide persons with Long Covid (PwLC) concepts on current thinking in LC, alongside self-management education and support. It highlights the role of embedded clinical research fellows (CRF), and their role in an in-depth service evaluation of the VRP, using established research methods and being peer reviewed/supervised by a research team to support best practice in an evidence poor field.

The health of the population is determined by a range of complex and interconnected influences, many of which, such as poverty, inequality, housing, education, employment, mobility, transport and pollution, fall outside a medical remit. In order for nurses and other healthcare professionals to tackle public health, they not only need to engage with individuals, families and communities, but should also have the ability to influence the design and development of services and understand the new relationships with local authorities and other agencies.

Jane DeVille-Almond, Independent Nurse Consultant/Chair of the British Obesity Society; Senior Lecturer at the University of
Wolverhampton.