Tuberculosis - RNOH/GIRFT review: national report

4 Structure of this Report

This report is displayed in sections as they appeared in the data packs and generally follows the structure of the deep dive visits. Each section has a commentary, based upon the data and information from the visits and includes the relevant graph or reference to it within the complete data pack which can be found via the link in Annex E. Following this, there are recommendations made for each section which can be considered at the TB service, Health Board or national level.

Services are not specifically named or highlighted apart from those that appear in the good practice section where we have received permission to do so.

The report has relevant sections aligned to the data pack structure. After a brief section of the ‘epidemiology’ there is an overview of ‘workforce’ considered as medical, nursing, administrative and clerical. This is followed by a review of ‘policies and procedures’ for service providers and a section about ‘data management’.

Following a section on ‘diagnostics’, the bulk of the report is considered as ‘management’ and, for ease, is broken down into several sub-sections, each with their own recommendations, again broadly following the information of the core data pack and the deep dive visits. The final section on ‘preventative therapy’ includes: ‘occupational health’, ‘biological screening’ and the ‘Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine (BCG)’. There is a large section on ‘contact tracing’ which the graphs highlight has considerable variation in practice. While there is not a formal commissioned ‘latent TB’ infection initiative in Scotland, several Health Boards are attempting to make a difference with excellent results. These are mentioned in the ‘asylum and migrant’ section of ‘prevention’ but more detail is included in the ‘good practice’ section.

The good practice section has many examples which are found via the link in Annex E.

There are many documents and much information referred to in this report; some of these are attached as Annexes, as per the list below, and the remaining larger documents are stored centrally for access.

The Annex documents referenced within this report include:

A: TB service survey participants

B: Martin Allen Biography

C: A list of deep dive meetings

D: Glossary of the common abbreviations used.

E: Link to the Good Practice resources and other useful links (Includes documents referenced within the report and other links which may be useful:

• Good practice documents
• The guidance for the survey questions
• Full anonymised data pack
• Key lines of enquiry – slide question prompts