ICPUS

Before Integrated Care Pathway Users Scotland was formed there was the Scottish Pathway Users Group (SPUG). It was set up as part of the Clinical Resource and Audit Group (CRAG) ICP Project from 1996-99. SPUG changed its name to the Scottish Pathways Association (SPA) and at one point it had 222 members, with approximately 300 pathways recorded. Inquiries came from all over Scotland as well as the rest of the UK, and overseas from as far away as New Zealand. Sample pathways, and information packs were sent out on a regular basis.

Over the length of the project SPA organised numerous half-day study sessions held at different venues across Scotland, along with a two-day training seminar in Kirkcaldy and a one-day seminar in Melrose.

People involved at that time were Rhona Hotchkiss, (ICP Project Manager & Chair of SPUG/SPA), Patricia Kent, (ICP Co-ordinator & organiser of SPUG / SPA) & Yvonne Chalmers, (Project Nurse for ICPs at Law Hospital).

Following the completion of the project in 1999, a lack of funding or an organiser meant that SPA officially ceased to exist. Despite this, the remaining staff at Law and the Western Infirmary continued to be contacted and provide information to staff across the UK on a regular basis over the next couple of years. With the lack of an official body in Scotland, interested people joined the National Pathway Association [NPA]. This situation meant that Scottish staff were having to travel a great deal to meet clinicians who operated in the subtly different healthcare structures of England & Wales.

ICPUS’s first meeting was in Stirling in January 2001, organised by Alan Fisher (ICP Facilitator, NHS Lothian – meeting sponsored by the Dept. of Nursing, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh), contacting people he’d heard of via the NPA and an old SPUG contact list. Everyone there had a common interest in ICPs and a wish to meet others working in the same area. The group discussed common interests such as training and education, diagnosis-specific Care Pathways etc. At this meeting staff volunteered to help organise further meetings and take the group forward: e.g. Karen Jenkins (nee Moody, of the State Hospital offered to help with the mailing list & she contacted all the NHS trusts in Scotland to find out about people working with Integrated Care Pathways and tell them about the group.)

These volunteers became the ICPUS Core group which meets quarterly. From this has developed an outer network of staff with an interest in ICPs but who can not attend the Core Group – they act as local contacts. ICPUS currently has around 200 contacts on a database.