Greater Manchester Essence of Care (GMEC)
Network of Essence of Care leads across Greater Manchester.
Background to Essence of Care
Essence of Care is a national toolkit of patient focused benchmarks around the fundamentals of patient care. There are now 11 benchmarks, which were devised with patients to address their concerns:
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Continence and bladder and bowel care
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Personal and oral hygiene
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Food and nutrition
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Pressure ulcers
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Privacy & Dignity
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Record keeping
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Safety of clients with mental health needs
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Principles of self care
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Communication
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Promoting health
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Care environment
The benchmarks can be downloaded from the Department of Health.
Essence of Care activity can be acceptable evidence for several of the Standards for Better Health and may be requested as evidence in investigations into complaints by the Healthcare Commission.
What does our network do?
GMEC is a supportive network of representatives involved in implementing Essence of Care from all hospitals and PCTs across Greater Manchester. Representatives meet regularly to agree the evidence for best practice and devise benchmarking tools. Results are compared across the region allowing the identification and sharing of good practice and areas for improvement. We are keen to share our tools and network with others.
All our annual reports can be downloaded from the Greater Manchester supra district clinical audit site.
Network contact: Network contact: Paula Porter (Regional Audit Coordinator), Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, paula.porter@christie.nhs.uk