Special Feature: PBRN initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic
First of all, ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ PBRN would like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of all the clinicians and health professionals who are on the front line to take care of us in this historic pandemic context that we all live in. So, on behalf of the entire ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ PBRN team, THANK YOU!
Like many of us and many health networks, we had to direct almost all of our activities towards work related to COVID-19. We would like to make our contribution to support our clinics and our clinicians to fight against this pandemic, it is for this reason that we concentrate all our efforts by working jointly with the three other Quebec PBRN to develop and support research projects that will help to better manage this situation and draw practical lessons from it.
Two common projects between the four Quebec PBRN and Réseau-1 Québec are underway:
- Téléconsultation en première ligne: Portrait de la transformation rapide des GMF-U en contexte de COVID-19. The objective of the project is to draw a first portrait of the rapid transformation of clinical practices to ensure accessibility in primary care services in the context of COVID-19, i.e. a radical departure from in-person visits towards the use of teleconsultations within GMF-U and follow its development over the next year.
- Serious illness conversations in the context of a viral pandemic: a controlled cluster trial. The objective of the study is to compare a strategy for implementing tools to support primary care clinicians in leading discussions in the event of a serious illness.
Réseau-1 Québec has also mobilized all possible resources to support the efforts of researchers and clinicians to improve primary care and services in the context of COVID-19. For this reason, a special call for projects on the impact of COVID-19 in primary care was launched on March 31. This call will replace this year's call for research projects on innovations. The amount available is $ 25,000 per project, and the deadline for project submission is April 26, 2020 ().
The objective of this call for projects on COVID-19 is to finance up to two projects over a period of up to 12 months to generate results that will help improve primary care and services, in a short-term, for the benefit of patients. The projects may relate to the management of COVID-19 in primary care services (treatment, prevention, harmful effects, etc.) or its consequences (management of other diseases, changes in practices, etc.).
For more information about common projects or the special call for projects from R1Q, contact us at: pbrn.fammed [at] mcgill.ca
Again, a BIG THANKS for our brave clinicians.
Stay healthy, and stay strong!