LOCOMOTION Lead NHS Site Named Award Finalists

Congratulations to the Leeds Long COVID Community Rehabilitation Service! Their Long COVID (LC) holistic virtual rehabilitation programme has been selected as a finalist at the Medipex Awards for the ‘Improved treatments, therapies and rehabilitation’ award.

With further learning about symptomology and presentation of LC, one holistic programme encompassing all the main symptoms was created. This is now the service’s core intervention providing patients with education, tools, and strategies to help self-manage their LC symptoms. As well as increasing efficiency by delivering rehabilitation on a larger scale, it also provides peer support which is extremely valuable to the patient group.

The Leeds LC service are the lead NHS site in the LOCOMOTION study. Excellent work such as the development of this holistic programme will feed directly into the LOCOMOTION study, through the Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC) taking place in workstream 1 of the study. Healthcare professionals from the Leeds service are actively involved in the QIC, which consists of a range of LC services with geographic and organisational diversity to share knowledge, best practice, and learning for best practice management of medical problems, therapy, service model, and workforce. Insights on best practice on the topics at the QIC are written up as a formal report and made available for dissemination within and outside the LOCOMOTION consortium. The first example of this is the BMJ Practice Pointer, ‘Long covid – an update for primary care’, which was published by members of the LOCOMOTION team as an output from the QIC.

Echoing the value of peer support to many people living with LC, the Leeds LC service has kindly participated in the LOCOMOTION workstream 1.5, regarding how different models of peer support are currently being delivered and how peer support may tackle some of the social inequalities that COVID has widened. Participating in interviews, alongside representatives from online groups, a range of NHS, private and council services, Leeds has shared its model of delivery and thoughts on how peer support can be furthered developed in the future. Researchers from workstream 1.5 are currently analysing interview transcripts and look forward to sharing findings with the wider LOCOMOTION team.

Rachel Tarrant, Clinical Pathway Co-ordinator for the service - "We are immensely proud to have been selected as a finalist for the Medipex awards for the second year running. As a service we continue to work extremely hard in this evolving area of practice to be innovative, whilst providing the best care to our patients. We are so grateful to be recognised for this."