Hi everyone, my name is Kate Atkinson and I am the Director of Service Development and Improvement here at the Trust. I said I’d blog this week as Martin is on leave because I really want to talk about improvement and I make no apologies for the number of times I am about to use that word!
Having worked at the Trust for 14 years, I am proud to have been part of our journey of improvement and I see on a daily basis that improving safe, personal and effective care is at the heart of what we do for our patients, their families and each other as colleagues.
For a while now we have been looking at how we can better support staff to continuously identify and make improvements happen, so I wanted to give you a flavour of what is going on.
Our fantastic Improvement Hub team, headed up by Helen Rolle, Associate Director of Improvement, support teams across the Trust and wider system to use our SPE+ improvement methodology to understand, design, test and implement changes that lead to improvement.
There is some really cool science (yes, we are geeks!) behind the methodology that supports us to achieve the best possible results, delivering tangible benefits in quality, the experience of colleagues and patients and performance.
If we get those right, we become more efficient too. From my perspective, what is not to like!?
At Trust level we have identified a number of key delivery and improvement programmes which include quality and safety priorities, urgent and emergency care improvement, elective improvement, care closer to home, people priorities and our waste reduction programme.
Each week the Exec Team huddle for an update at the ‘Improvement Wall’ and teams from these programmes come along to talk through the improvement work underway. I think I speak for the entire Exec Team when I say we are continually blown away by the breadth of work being delivered alongside the ‘day job’ and the intense pressures we are facing across the Trust.
To give you a flavour of the sort of work, let me share the highlights from just a few projects:
- ED ambulance handovers – supporting the ED team and NWAS colleagues to reduce the time taken for patients to be transferred into the department. The team achieved a fantastic 40% reduction in the number of people waiting over 30 minutes, which frees up ambulances to get back on the road to waiting calls
- ED ambulance conveyance – this aims to support community colleagues to reduce the numbers of patients who need to come by ambulance in the first place by providing improved access to our fantastic community services. In a recent pilot community teams successfully supported 57 of 72 patients to remain safely at home instead of coming into ED. We are now looking to see how this can be rolled out further and we’re really excited to see the benefits
- Nutrition and hydration – this is one of our key quality and safety priorities as we know that patients getting the right nutrition and hydration is just so important to recovery. The team have been working in the background to understand the opportunities to improve and in November we will be launching a collaborative across the Trust to share this learning across all wards and departments. Watch this space for details of how to get involved
For the first time this year we are really excited to be supporting five teams to take part in a brand new Clinical Quality Academy, in partnership with Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, supporting people to learn about the science of improvement and to go on their own improvement journey.
The teams are going to be taking some really important projects forwards starting in November which include:
- Pain Management in the Emergency Department
- Developing the Hospital at Home service
- Introduction of Critical Care Patient Safety Boards
- Improving organisational learning from incidents
- Anti-racism project to support health equality and workforce inclusion and belonging
This is already a lot – but in reality it is just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know we currently have 388 improvement projects registered by colleagues right across the organisation? And these are just the ones we know about! If you are doing some exciting improvement work please do let us know about it and register your project here (Improvement Project Registration Form).
If you want to showcase an improvement project you can also come along to one of our monthly Improvement Report Outs by contacting us at quality.improvement@elht.nhs.uk. This is always chaired by one of the Exec Team and is one of the ways we are encouraging everyone to share all the amazing things they’re doing.
I chaired last week’s report out and we had two great presentations by Natalie Nixon and Emma Mort, both Trainee Advanced Clinical Practitioners undertaking improvement projects on reducing ophthalmology waiting lists and improving traumatic brain injury as part of their MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice. The Improvement Report Outs are on the 4th Thursday of the month at 12 – 12.45pm and the next one is on 26th October. Click on this link to join us (Improvement Report Out meeting link) or you can also watch back previous Report Outs here (Report Out Videos).
Finally, I couldn’t blog without mentioning that last week I had the honour of presenting the SPE+ Improvement Champion award at the Star Awards. As I said on the night, this is a new award to recognise colleagues and teams who have implemented ideas to directly improve patient care.
I just wanted to pay tribute to everyone nominated and our finalists the Breast Pain Pathway Implementation Team and Louise Counsell as well as, of course, the amazing winners Gill Phillips and Dhanya Santhosh, who introduced a nurse-led service to assist nutritional support through bedside placement of NJ tube insertion, instead of patients undergoing an endoscopy procedure for this. I’m really excited to come along and present your award in person and find out more!
Finally, let me just say how massively impressed I am every day by how the ELHT family constantly looks to improve and provide safe, personal and effective care. If my blog has piqued your interest and you want to learn more about improvement or get involved then please check out our Sharepoint site (Improvement Hub Sharepoint Site), follow us on X (formally Twitter) @ELHT_QI, book onto one of our training courses to support your improvement idea via the learning hub or drop us a line if you need some advice or support.
Take care all and thanks for reading!
Kate