Clinical Photography: 

January 2025

Happy New Year to you all. Since the last newsletter we have had many people on Annual Leave and Sick Leave so thank you to everyone for all their hard work on maintaining workflows and ensuring all clinical service have been covered. 

We have had a few governance issues within the last month which have highlighted a few changes within workflows and resulted in protocols being amended or new ones written. 

CP27 Cardiothoracic Own Images – A new status has been added to filemaker “08 Printed”. When you have printed Cardiothoracic images in the processing stage. Change the status to “08 Printed” and put images in the box. A qualified photographer will then check the prints and change the status to “09 QA Clinical”. The protocol has been amended to reflex this change in workflow. 

This new status will also be used for all printed patients ie: Swans and photobooks. 

Following the Governance Incident at WHC (See Governance Section) 2 new protocols have been written for Patient Refuses Photography for both NX and WHC. GPP16 and WMH GPP8. Going forward only photograph extra patients that isn’t going to impact patients that have already been rung through. Ensure all patients that have refused photography have been recorded following the new protocols. 

There has been an excel spreadsheet added to the Digitalwork Server at WHC called “Late Referrals” – please ensure you are completing the “Request for patient photography” form correctly and “What date was the consent form completed?” is completed. Please fill in the excel file on the server so we can monitor obscure requests. 

Over the next few weeks, we will be starting to rota the 3 photographers at Walsall. 

Reminder to all Photographers to ensure they are adding notes into Clinical Filemaker if standard views or practice hasn’t been followed. 

Last reminder when gaining consent for all patients on all sites ensure the patient has signed the consent themselves if they have capacity to do so and only gain consent from a qualified member of staff in the patients best interest if the patient lacks capacity.

Teledermatology 

Happy new year! There are a few updates regarding Teledermatology to being 2025. Firstly, Cinapsis – the platform we are using to run the service – are starting the work needed to get out clinics up and running. Following this there will be some work done by Datatherapy to integrate Filemaker into the process, aligning the process with our current clinical processes at RWT. 

In terms of locations, it’s looking likely the clinic will be based across multiple community sites, probably starting with Mayfields, with one day each at Alfred Squire and potentially West Park. 

This is all subject to tweaking currently, but things are moving in the right direction! 

We’re also going to begin getting more staff trained in running the Teledermatology clinics. This is primarily to broaden everybody’s experience and give you a chance to participate in a fascinating sub-specialty of Clinical Photography, but also to expand the departments options for covering annual leave and sickness. 

Lastly, there will be some updated and new protocols issued soon on the use of the new dermatoscopes, as well as protocols for running the clinics at Shrewsbury and Hollinswood.