ESRI Public Seminar: The impact of social prescribing on general practice use

The ESRI’s public seminar series invites researchers from both the ESRI and other institutions to present new research on a variety of public policy issues. A seminar on ‘The impact of social prescribing on general practice use’ will take place on 13 February 2020 with guest speaker Dr Darach Ó Ciardha, GP at Tallaght Cross.

Seminar topic
Social prescribing is experiencing increasing interest amongst community organisations, healthcare professionals, the Health Service Executive and many other potential stakeholders. Social prescribing can be defined as the connection of patients to non-medical sources of support within their own community to improve physical and mental wellbeing. While being a relatively recent development in the Irish setting, social prescribing has been in evolution in the UK for almost decades and has been identified as a strategic priority by the NHS. Social prescribing offers the possibility of leveraging Social Capital to improve health and wellbeing. Though social prescribing is not new, very few robust studies have been conducted into its efficacy and this represents a challenge for stakeholders and researchers and practitioners.

We will discuss the experience of our GP Practice, GPs at Tallaght Cross, where we have been implementing social prescribing since 2016. We have identified a 25% reduction in attendance amongst patients who have availed of social prescribing over a two-year period. We will describe the process as we have developed it within our practice and discuss the insights we have gained.

About the speaker
Dr Darach Ó Ciardha is a GP at Tallaght Cross and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Public Health & Primary Care at Trinity College Dublin. He is the Assistant Programme Director on the Trinity College HSE GP Training Programme and a board member of Tallaght University Hospital. He helped found GPBuddy.ie in 2010, which is an online resource for GPs and other healthcare professionals to find the medical professionals and services they require.

Event information
Date: Thursday 13 February 2020
Time: 1-2.30pm
Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2
Registration: www.esri.ie/events/the-impact-of-social-prescribing-on-general-practice-use

ESRI seminar series 
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