NELFT QIS Sharing and Learning Event 2023
The NELFT Quality Improvement Services Sharing and Learning Event 2023: Improving Quality and Quality Improvement within NELFT
This event offered the opportunity to:
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share and learn from our approach to improving quality and quality improvement;
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celebrate success and focussed on the opportunity and motivation for users of service, staff, and teams to prioritise quality;
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and discussed opportunities to work together and collaborate with NELFT central teams who contribute to or have quality in their remit.
A full programme of events is available here: QIS Event Programme (15th May).pdf [pdf] 179KB
To view recordings from the day and to access project storyboards please click on the sections below.
Key Speakers
Below you can find recordings of our key speakers who spoke about quality improvement and clinical audit in terms of their area of expertise and their influence/placement within NELFT.
Speakers
Mirek Skrypak (Director of Quality Improvement)
- Hear Mirek Skrypak introduce the NELFT QIS Sharing and Learning Event and introduce how the Quality Improvement Services will be supporting NELFT over the next three years to embed quality improvement into the trust.
Clare Linger (Quality Improvement Team Lead)
- Hear Clare Linger speak about how the Quality Improvement Services supported the Adult Speech and Therapy Team understand a co-design project with users of the service.
Eileen Taylor (NELFT Chair)
- Hear Eileen Taylor share about how the NELFT Board is prioritising quality improvement.
Russell Razzaque (Director of Research and Innovation)
- Hear Russell Razzaque speak about the link between innovation and improvement.
Natasha Howard (Head of Knowledge and Library Services)
- Hear Natasha Howard speak about how the NELFT Knowledge and Library Services can support you learn more about quality improvement and clincial audit.
Caroline Allum (Chief Medical Officer)
- Hear Caroline Allum speak about the NELFT Quality Improvement Services journey so far.
Wellington Makala (Executive Chief Nursing Officer / Executive Director AHP & Psychological Professions)
- Hear Wellington Makala speak about embedding a Quality Management System within NELFT.
Jacqui Van Rossum (Acting Chief Executive)
- Hear Jacqui Van Rossum speak about her experiences within quality improvement and more about quality improvement within NELFT.
Storyboards and video presentation of audit and QI projects
Below you can find the three winning clinical audit and three winning quality improvement projects, as well as the highly commended projects, both as storyboard pdfs, but also short 2-5min video presentations.
Clinical Audits:
Winning audits
- NELFT Annual Healthcare Records Audit - Steve Rankin (Head of Data Quality / Medical Records)
- Prescribing in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: A snapshot review across two inpatient units - Dr Beryl Navti (Pharmacist)
- Stopping Overuse of Medication in People with Learning Disability: Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Services - Dr Annie Swanepoel (Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist)
Highly commended audits
- An audit exploring ethnic inequalities in accessing perinatal mental health services in NELFT - Dr Adetutu Kunuji (CT3 Core Trainee)
- Visibility of patient’s voice on the care plan Integrated Case Management CHS in B&D - Angela Adophy (Advanced Clinical Practitioner)
- How can we improve the quality of health assessments of children and young people who are in the social care system? - Dr Naila Nazi (Consultant Paediatrician)
- POMH QIP Topic 1h &3e - Prescribing high dose and combined antipsychotics in Adults 2022 – Pharmacy Team
- POMH-UK QIP Topic 20b Improving the quality of prescribing valproate in mental health services. – Arjan Degun
- POMH QIP 18b: Use of Clozapine 2021 – Fatimat Aigbekaen
Quality Improvement Projects
Winning projects
- One Voice: Bringing the Hospital Home Post-Laryngectomy - Adult Speech and Language Therapy Team (Rhiannon Haag and Michelle Coleman)
- To improve the overall quality of medication reviews that form part of the annual health check for patients with learning disabilities - Rizwana Dudhia (Lead Pharmacist for Learning Disabilities and Autism)
- Reducing Restrictive Practice Monet Ward, Acute Rehabilitation Directorate - Caroline Okworu (Ward Manager)
Highly commended projects
- Reducing Documentation in Community Nursing - Angela Witham (Transformational Lead)
- Reducing the number of days from amputation to referral received at the prosthetic service by 10%, for patients under Basildon Vascular team by 1st December 2022 - Lauren Mentessi (Prosthetic Clinical Nurse Specialist)
- Improving an individual’s ability to live with persistent pain, which can occur as a result ofan acquired upper or lower limb amputation - Lindsey Barker (Occupational Therapist)
Profession Specific Discussion Panel
The final session of the day was a profession specific discussion panel, which gave the opportunity for professional leads from AHP, Nursing, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Psychology to speak on how they use QI within their profession, what they need in order to further embed QI within their profession, and what they would like to see moving forward.
Panel Speaker List
- Judith Friedman (Clinical Director Psychological Professions)
- Amy King (Chief Pharmacist)
- Dr Stephen O’Connor (Associate Medical Director of Quality Improvement)
- Susan Smyth (Director of Nursing – Trust Wide Mental Health Inpatients)
- Christopher Tuckett (Director of AHPs)
Recording of panel
A summary of the key sharing and learning points are below, but you can also watch the full 80min discussion panel here: Afternoon discussion panel.mp4
Summary of panel
How is QI used within the professions:
- There was the general agreement that quality improvement is inherent to the work of all the professions, whether officially labelled as quality improvement or not. But the general day-to-day roles of each profession mean that they are working within a team to help care for patients and constantly reassessing care plan, looking where support and care for patients can be improved.
- However, it is not always labelled as quality improvement, either because there is a lack of knowledge and confidence around what quality improvement is, or other improvement methodologies might have been utilised such as research, innovation, transformation etc.
- It was also pointed out that improvement work isn't always shared, or celebrated and therefore although it is often happening, there isn't always the awareness of it by other teams/service/directorates etc.
What are the barriers to quality improvement and what could be offered to help remove these barriers:
- There can be the belief that intensive training or previous experience of quality improvement is required in order to lead on or take part in quality improvement work. Therefore, there is the desire to ensure that all staff feel enabled to get involved with quality improvement work, regardless of their previous experience, and trust that quality improvement is actually inherent to the jobs they already do and build the confidence that with some guidance and support from the quality improvement services or managers etc. they too can get involved with quality improvement work.
- In addition, noting that there are many parents of success, and that not all improvement work will be quality improvement work needs to be acknowledged and encouraged in order to ensure that improving the quality of our care is the priority, rather than the label of what sort of improvement methodoloy was utilised.
- Lack of resources was referred to a lot when it comes to quality improvement. This could be time, finance, workforce etc. It was noted that actually a solution to this lack of resource is often quality improvement, as if you can improve the efficiency of a service, inevitably there will be freeing up of various resources. However, in order for this to be possible in the first place a few asks were given, these included:
- Protected time for supervision so that managers can support staff more in addressing how they are improving and provide guidance around this.
- For leaders to lead by example, both in protecting time, but also prioritising quality improvement.
- Provide time and opportunity for teams to come together as a group to look, not just as individuals to address improvement outside of day-to-day work.
- For leaders to put staff first, which in turn will allow staff to put patients first. Without staff being given time, capacity, resources, attention etc. inevitably the patients will suffer.
- For teams to share the responsibility of improvement work. Projects don't just belong to one individual, instead they belong to the team (even if they are led by one individual). This will lead to sharing the time commitment across a team, but also share responsibility, meaning that all team members can benefit from learning around quality improvement, and can feel motivated and part of when it comes to improving the services they work in.
- Finally the shift from staff previously having to come to the Quality Improvement Services to seek support for improvement work, to members of the service being on the ground with the teams was noted and applauded as a positive change to address issues of resource.
General call for sharing, learning and celebration of improvement work:
- There was the general agreement that improvement work of any type (quality improvement, audit, innovation, research, transformation etc.) needs to be shared, published, celebrated, scaled-up and learnt from as a trust as this will both increase capability for staff to engage in improvemet work thorugh sharing skills and learning, but also increase motivation for staff to get involved with this work too.
Partnering services across NELFT
A variety of services across NELFT who also support NELFT's mission to improvement quality of care for our patients attended the event holding stands. These relationships are something the NELFT Quality Improvement Services view as key in order to ensure that we are able to reach this aim.
