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Showing results for tags 'Quality improvement'.
Found 757 results
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Content ArticleIn this guest blog for the Professional Records Standards Body (PRSB), Taffy Gatawa, Chief Information and Compliance Officer at everyLIFE Technologies, talks about the importance of ensuring that healthcare technologies comply with recognised standards. She discusses everyLIFE's experience on PRSB’s Standards Partnership Scheme, and their journey to implementing standards in their digital products. Taffy describes a process of learning and feedback, achieved through desktop research, clinical reviews and critical engagement with PRSB and customers.
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Content ArticleThe Suicide Prevention National Transformation Programme aims to reduce the number of deaths by suicide in England by 10% by 2020/21. NHS England are investing funding in 37 local areas to establish or develop their multi-agency suicide prevention action plans to reduce suicide and self-harm. These plans cover three of the main priority areas identified in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy: Reducing risk in men. Prevention and response to self-harm. Improving acute mental health care. Find out more about the programme and useful resources from the link below.
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Content Article
Can being open and transparent make us more opaque?
Anonymous posted an article in Florence in the Machine
‘Neo’ is an Allied Health Professional working on the frontline and asks what being open and transparent actually means and whether publishing a report or an investigation is just another tick box exercise if lessons aren't learned. -
Content Article
Safety Chats: Part 2 – Safety as measured
Gina Winter-Bates posted an article in Good practice
In a series of blogs, Gina Winter-Bates, Associate Nurse Director Quality and Safety at Solent NHS Trust, shares her experience of implementing Safety Chats. In her first blog, Gina explained what motivated her to introduce Safety Chats into her Trust. In part 2, Gina reflects on how we know we are safe and the safety measures her Trust has put in place. -
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This is part of our new series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people about their role and what motivates them to make health and social care safer. Lou worked in family liaison for the police service for thirty years, and she talks to us about how this experience is helping her develop family engagement services at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB). She describes the importance of valuing the voices of patients and their families, and the vital role of their input in improving safety in the healthcare system. She also talks about the challenges the Covid-19 pandemic posed to HSIB's family engagement work, and how speaking to patients and their families is being increasingly valued and professionalised by the healthcare system. -
Content ArticleVolunteers make a huge contribution to the NHS, and there is evidence that the role of volunteers has expanded in recent years. The most recent NHS workforce plan recognises and commits to maximising the value of volunteers as services are rebuilt and reformed after the Covid-19 pandemic. This resource by The King's Fund provides a framework for identifying how to move from volunteering as an ‘added extra’ to it making an integral contribution to the delivery of health care. It also explores ways in which volunteering can have a positive impact for all involved.
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Content ArticleThe Reducing Restrictive Practice Collaborative (RRP) aimed to reduce restrictive practice by one third in participating wards, measuring the following practices: Restraint – to prevent, restrict or subdue movement of the body, or part of the body of another person Seclusion – confinement in a room or physical space Rapid tranquillisation – use of sedative medication by injection. This webpage contains a number of resources related to the work of the collaborative, including a resource booklet outlining learning about running successful quality improvement projects.
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Content Article
LifeQI: Spread and Scale Cheatsheet
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Implementation of improvements
As you begin to see improvement in the outcomes of your QI project, you might want to think about spreading the improvement in other teams or wards, or scaling it up. However, the successful implementation of the results of an improvement project in other teams requires a well-rounded plan. This Spread and Scale Cheatsheet from LifeQI will enable you to decide whether you're ready to spread or scale the improvement and what you need to consider in both cases. -
Content Article
Safety Chats blog series: Part 1
Gina Winter-Bates posted an article in Good practice
In a series of blogs, Gina Winter-Bates, Associate Nurse Director Quality and Safety at Solent NHS Trust, shares her experience of implementing Safety Chats. In this first blog, Gina explains what motivated her to introduce Safety Chats into her Trust. -
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Peter Lachman explains why safety must be embedded into what we do every day, not what we do only after harm has occurred, and why we need to constantly ask ourselves “what do we need to do to be safe?” His new book, Oxford University Press Handbook of Patient Safety, translates the complex patient safety theories into actions that frontline staff can take to be safe. -
Content ArticleThe UK health system is under unprecedented strain. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these pressures, but it did not create them. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and its member organisations believe that as a country we are not facing up to the scale of the current challenges and we are not producing any coherent strategy to tackle the problems. Only when we confront these challenges will we be able to begin to fix the NHS. A combination of pressures means that the system is providing care and services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety and fall below what should be expected in a country with the resources of the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily, to the detriment of us all.
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Content ArticleFormal evaluations of programmes are an important source of learning about the challenges faced in improving quality in healthcare and how they can be addressed. The authors of this narrative review in BMJ Quality & Safety aimed to integrate lessons from evaluations of the Health Foundation's improvement programmes with relevant literature. They argue that securing improvement may be hard and slow and faces many challenges, but formal evaluations assist in recognising the nature of these challenges and help in addressing them.
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Content ArticleClinical governance can be defined as ‘the framework through which healthcare organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high quality of care’. This article aims to provide an introduction to clinical governance based on UK practice. The article defines and examines how UK health systems priorities safe care, effective care, person-centred care and assured care.
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Content ArticlePolypharmacy refers to the prescription of many medicines to one patient. As more people live longer with multiple long-term conditions, the number of medicines they take often increases. This can have a significant burden on the person managing and trying to adhere to multiple medicines regimes, and can also be harmful. The Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN) Network's Polypharmacy Programme aims to support healthcare professionals to identify patients at potential risk from polypharmacy, and to support better conversations about medicines. Based on the recommendations of the National Overprescribing Review (NOR) published in September 2021, the programme aims to achieve the following outcomes: A national network of Polypharmacy Communities of Practice, all working to address the system-wide challenges of problematic polypharmacy in their geographies. Routine use of the NHSBSA Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators to identify and prioritise patients for a shared decision-making Structured Medication Review. Increased confidence amongst the primary care prescribing workforce to safely stop medicines identified to be inappropriate or unnecessary. A change in patient expectations – to anticipate having a shared decision-making conversation about their medicines regularly, especially as they get older. A contribution to the evidence base around how to help patients to feel more empowered to open up about their medicines issues. A contribution to the evidence base around how to tackle problematic polypharmacy.
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Content ArticleIn July 2015 five NHS Trusts were selected to work with Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) to develop localised versions of the Virginia Mason Production System (an adaption of the Toyota Production System, a continuous improvement approach commonly known as Lean). The goal was to develop a sustainable culture of continuous improvement capability in each of the five partner NHS hospital Trusts, and to share lessons from the partnership with NHS system leaders. Here are a series of video interviews with the CEOs of these NHS Trusts and the Virginia Mason Institute.
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Content Article
AHRQ course- TeamSTEPPS® for diagnosis improvement
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Diagnosis
Diagnostic harm is an area of concern in healthcare quality and patient safety. A growing body of patient safety and care delivery research shows that diagnostic harm is both widespread and costly. TeamSTEPPS is an evidence-based program built on a framework composed of four teachable, learnable skills—communication, leadership, situation monitoring and mutual support. The TeamSTEPPS for Diagnosis Improvement Course applies the TeamSTEPPS framework to the specific problem of diagnostic error. On the course. teams will learn about how improved communication among all members of the team can help lead to safer, more accurate and more timely diagnosis in all healthcare settings. The course can be delivered virtually, in a classroom setting or as individual self-paced learning modules. Additional resources for trainees include: Team assessment tool for improving diagnosis Case study of the diagnostic journey of Mr. Kane Reflective practice tool Postcourse knowledge assessment -
Content ArticlePEOPLE FIRST is a CQC resource to help system leaders and service providers.
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Content ArticlePatients, families, and care providers affected by patient safety incidents expect there will be learning and improvement so that others will not suffer. For that, countries need mature data systems and a culture of safety that includes improving by learning from reporting hazards, harm, and near misses, as well as learning from situations and organisations where safe care is delivered consistently over time, which is in most cases. In this article, Ioana Popescu discusses patient safety in Canada. While systems are in place to support incident reporting, sharing, and learning from a variety of sources, in Canada truly national incident reporting is limited to medications, adverse drug reactions, and device failures. However, there are other pan-Canadian and grassroots efforts to advance reporting and learning from patient safety incidents that are complementary.
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This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Sarah and Jaydee are working on an innovative project at NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board (ICB) to ensure general practice is a central part of improving patient safety across services. They talk about the value and challenges of collaborative working, how they are tailoring their offer to fit the needs of local GP practices, and making patient safety a core part of training for all healthcare professionals. -
Content ArticleReducing errors in diagnosis is the next big challenge for patient safety. This article highlights ways in which healthcare organisations can pursue learning and exploration of diagnostic excellence (LEDE). Building on current evidence and their recent experiences in developing such a learning organisation at Geisinger in Pennsylvania, the authors propose a 5-point action plan and corresponding policy levers to support the development of LEDE organisations.
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Content ArticleDespite global consensus that access to pharmaceuticals as a lifesaving commodity is a fundamental human right, 2 billion people globally still lack access to medicines. In this blog, Karrar Karrar, Access to Medicines Adviser at Save the Children, looks at why weak regulatory systems are a major patient safety issue in low- and middle-income countries. He highlights that lack of regulatory capacity results in falsified, substandard and fake medicines making their way into local pharmacies and hospitals. It also delays patient access to new medicines due to lengthy processing times. Karrar argues that governments must prioritise investments in strengthening national regulatory systems and increase cross-country collaboration to strengthen regional and global regulatory networks and systems.
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Content ArticleThis toolkit from the New South Wales Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC) provides information, resources and quality improvement (QI) tools for managers and clinicians to improve sepsis care. The resources can be adapted to suit local needs and cover: Getting started Making improvements Data for improvement Communicating changes Providing education Sustain and spread
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Content ArticleLouise Greenwood is joined by: Sarah Kay, GP Clinical Lead for Patient Safety at NHS Dorset Jaydee Swarbrick, Patient Safety Specialist at NHS Dorset to discuss the importance of patient safety at this time of significant pressure across the NHS. Patient safety is about maximising the things that go right and minimising the things that go wrong. It is integral to the NHS’ definition of quality in healthcare, alongside effectiveness and patient experience.
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Content ArticleOnline patient feedback is becoming increasingly prevalent on an international scale. However, limited research has explored how healthcare organisations implement such feedback. This research from Baines et al. sought to explore how an acute hospital, recently placed into ‘special measures’ by a regulatory body implemented online feedback to support its improvement journey.
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Content ArticleTrusts that embed trust-wide improvement successfully throughout their organisations embrace accountability for that improvement and have boards that offer space to leaders at all levels to identify, shape and drive that improvement. They have a consistent and coherent approach. Perhaps most critically, they support their staff to engage in and lead improvement efforts by enabling them to both develop improvement skills and capabilities, and by focusing on relationships and culture. Staff in these organisations come to work to deliver and improve services. But how do boards support this evolution to happen? In our first three virtual webinar sessions as part of our trust-wide improvement programme, supported by The Health Foundation, NHS Providers delved into what it really means to have a systematic approach to improvement and what learning we can draw from the experiences of COVID-19. It explored diverse experiences of organisation-wide improvement, with differing investment levels, and type and rigour of method used. Trust leaders shared practical, actionable insights for peers to consider, with a number of common principles emerging that could help sustain the gains made as a result of the pandemic and respond to the scale of the challenges ahead. This briefing highlights what has been learnt so far
