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Here are just some of East Midlands AHSN programmes: ESCAPE – pain 374 people received life-changing rehabilitation helping them to live with osteoarthritis. Focus ADHD – East Midlands ADHD programme to improve ADHD diagnosis for children and young people selected for national adoption and spread. ChatHealth – Secure health messaging service reaches 100% coverage for young people in the East Midlands. Digital outpatient appointment follow up – Trust’s Oncology clinical specialty reduced unnecessary follow up appointments by 97% in one pathway using digital approach. Transfers of Care Around Medicines – Over 12,000 at-risk patients received additional support with their medications when leaving hospital. Patient safety work with care homes – Commitment by East Midlands care homes to their residents’ safety applauded by national health and care system leaders. Atrial Fibrillation – 220 strokes avoided and 73 lives saved across East Midlands.

Achievements Reviewed more than 300 innovations and supported the adoption of 50 of them. Prevented 30 strokes per year through atrial fibrillation initiatives in primary care. Met 500 companies and established 30 industry partnerships. Leveraged £123m to improve health in our region and support economic growth. Key local projects Mental health: Relapse prevention following psychological therapy – includes launch of Paddle smartphone app providing ongoing support for patients. Heart failure: Improving treatment in primary care – working with Novartis to deliver better patient outcomes and reduce hospital admissions. Sleep improvement: Enhancing mental health and self-care at scale – real-world evaluation of the experiences of thousands of people who used the Sleepio online digital support programme. Maternity: Developing an e-learning package for fetal heart rate monitoring – helping midwifery colleagues deliver an award-winning tool developed in Reading/Oxford. Key national programmes Reducing stroke risk: Working with all clinical commissioning groups and primary care, sharing learning and spreading best practice to reduce strokes related to atrial fibrillation, diagnosing 3,000 more patient. Better outcomes following emergency surgery: Working with the five acute NHS trusts in the Oxford AHSN region which perform emergency laparotomy surgery, reducing mortality and length of stay for more than 800 patients. Preventing cerebral palsy: Promoting the adoption and spread of magnesium sulphate in pre-term labour through the ‘PReCePT’ initiative, sustaining uptake at over 85% and improving life-chances of more than 100 babies. Reducing medication errors: Working with all CCGs, pharmacists and GPs to train almost 200 practices in our region through the PINCER programme.

The audit consists of 3 elements: 1. A survey of the organisation of maternity care in England, Scotland and Wales will provide an up-to-date overview of maternity care provision, women’s access to recommended services and options available to them. 2. A continuous prospective clinical audit of a number of key interventions and outcomes to identify unexpected variation between service providers or regions. 3. A flexible programme of periodic audits on specific topics (‘sprint audits’) within a focused time frame.

Principle 1 – Culture of safety Every organisation involved in providing NHS healthcare should actively foster a culture of safety and learning in which all staff feel safe to raise concerns. How can you describe a culture? What does it look like? I am sure that there has been many an hour at board meetings discussing this very subject. Describing the ideal safety culture is easy, we are told to adopt a ‘just culture’, however fostering a culture of safety is not that simple, following a guide doesn’t work. ‘Fostering a culture’ means to nurture and support a way of working. This principle also asks for Trusts to ‘actively foster’, to me this means that it is a dynamic action. It is not just a ‘thing’ that is said, but a ‘thing’ that you do. Working in the NHS for years, I feel I have become institutionalised, along with middle management. Bad habits are hard to break, we may start out trying to change our behaviours, but the old-world bites back. Its easy to fit in. It feels safer for us to fit in. There are multiple layers of management. Each layer has its own processes and brings with it its own culture. Hierarchy is steep in the NHS, if you do not go through the correct chain of command, you may be labelled as a troublemaker or whistleblower. This principle mentions that ALL staff should feel safe to raise concerns. As a clinician, I have the safety net of my professional body, they will support me. But what about porters, domestic and support staff or volunteers? Do they feel empowered to speak up? They may feel at the very bottom of this hierarchy. How are Trusts ensuring that they also have a voice? This principle excludes the most important group. Patients. Why are Trusts not empowering patients to speak up? Why are there no robust mechanisms for them to speak up? It is not just staff that need to feel safe in speaking up, it's patients and their families. Principle 2 – Culture of raising concerns Raising concerns should be part of the normal routine business of any well-led NHS organisation. I have raised concerns where I work, as I am sure we all have. We do it via Datix. There is a usual process. We spot the harm/concern and we log it on the computer. It gets graded by the safety team and we hear nothing back. It then happens again and the cycle repeats. This within normal behaviour. This is normal routine. Many staff are not happy with this routine of raising concerns. They have taken the effort to take the time to log the concern but feel disengaged when they hear nothing back. So why bother? They bother because it is to cover themselves and they also bother in the hope that improvements will be made. However, what if these concerns are larger. What if these concerns you have are a system wide problem? Datix is not always the correct route, it doesn’t fit. You can alert your manager, who then will alert their manager and so it goes up the chain. If at any point you feel you are not being listened to you can then go and see your Freedom to Speak Up Guardian (FTSUG). Sounds ideal. Some FTSUG work part time, some work clinically on top of this role. They are not always easily accessible. I am unclear on what value they bring to an organisation. What changes can they make? Are they listened to? Have they been put there to ‘tick the box’? Principle 3 – Culture free from bullying Freedom to speak up about concerns depends on staff being able to work in a culture which is free from bullying and other oppressive behaviours. I have raised concerns where I work. If I follow the usual routine of raising concerns, all is good. Nothing happens. If I raise a concern outside of the normal routine, this is where the problems start. Reflecting back on a time when I raised a concern about three wards and their lack of equipment, I raised the concern with the Matron and the Patient Safety lead. More equipment needed to be purchased to prevent harm from happening to patients. This equipment was needed urgently, and I felt that the Datix system would take too long and harm would have happened before the problem was addressed. I received an email from the Head of Nursing for that area, defending why there was a lack of equipment and that I was wrong for emailing the Matron and the safety lead, that I went through the wrong channels and that she would like to see me to discuss the matter. Of course, I accepted the offer of meeting up. After all, what had I done wrong? Emailed the wrong person? Raised a concern? Had I spoken out of turn? When I received this email I felt upset and scared, then angry. This was bullying behaviour from a senior member of the Trust. I then thought, why? The Head of Nursing was known to me. She has been a real inspiration to me, so what has happened? This must be a cultural way of coping with concerns that are directly involved in the way she had managed this area. Now she was being faced with a concern raised by someone low down in the ranks, which could possibly look like an attack on the way she manages this area. Was she annoyed that she wasn’t involved in the email trail? Whatever it was, the way that the concern was raised was out of the usual. It upset the way we do things round here. I don’t want to be labelled as a whistleblower. I am doing my job and doing what the board have asked. I am raising concerns. As you see this blog is anonymous. The fear of vilification is strong and is very real. And all this with an issue where my intervention prevented a never event and for which I was thanked. With this experience, will I raise concerns again in real time to prevent harm? Or will I choose to go through the official route, wait and see if anything happens and be ready to explain (if asked) when the Trust undertakes a serious incident investigation or defends a clinical negligence claim? Principle 4 – Culture of visible leadership All employers of NHS staff should demonstrate, through visible leadership at all levels in the organisation, that they welcome and encourage the raising of concerns by staff. Initiating the FTSUG in every NHS Trust was a great idea, however, if we had visible leadership that welcomed and encouraged raising of concerns, we would not need this service. The FTSUP is a sticking plaster for a deeper routed problem. The Head of Nursing had a very human response to my concerns. She was defending actions that others had taken and defending why the problem happened. This is a natural reaction to feeling threatened, so perhaps I was in the wrong in the tone in which I raised the concern? This led me to question what training middle managers have on dealing with staff or patient concerns. When confronted with a concern do they know what to do? What do they do with this knowledge, how do they communicate with the staff or patient raising the concern? How do they raise up the line with their directors and the Board? Will they be thanked for highlighting opportunities to improve or will they be met with defensiveness and hostility? And what about ‘raising concerns’ training for staff and patients? We also need to know what is expected of us and what we can expect back, that someone has our back when we raise concerns. Principle 5 – Culture of valuing staff Employers should show that they value staff who raise concerns, and celebrate the benefits for patients and the public from the improvements made in response to the issues identified. If adequate training in this area existed perhaps more staff and patients would speak up as they feel that they were being heard, being cared for and feel safe. In turn, middle management would feel more equipped to handle concerns with a more inquisitive approach rather than one of defence. Being involved in improvements in care is a wonderful experience. Seeing that you have made a difference to patients is a privilege. We need to react to people raising concerns in a different way, using a different lens and we all need the training and support to do so. What are Trusts doing to show that raising concerns is welcomed, makes a difference and helps us improve safety? Shouldn’t this be publicly reported to staff, to commissioners and the general public? Principle 6 – Culture of reflective practice There should be opportunities for all staff to engage in regular reflection of concerns in their work. Reflections of our concerns for work could be taken as evidence, this has been seen in the Dr Garber incident. This has made us fearful of writing our reflections down. Shwartz rounds are great but take a lot of organising and are only for the few staff. Time will always be an issue, so quick-fire reflections about what has gone wrong, and even better what has gone right, with your immediate team are a fantastic opportunity. We try and have after action reviews, however the harsh reality of clinical practice does not lend itself to a half a dozen staff downing tools to talk about just what happened. The capacity to do this is just not there. I am reflecting now on concerns that I have raised. It’s a shame I don’t feel confident in putting my name to this blog for fear of what my Trust will say. As I said, I do not want to be a whistleblower, none of us do. We want to raise concerns, have them acted on and keep our patients safe. Call for action At present the conditions are not right for us to speak up safely for these reasons: Our current reporting process doesn’t fit large system wide concerns, this is set up for incidents that have already harmed patients or staff. A Just Culture approach is spoken about but is not demonstrated or welcomed when concerns are raised. Staff are not equipped to handle concerns once they are raised to them. Patients or staff are not encouraged to speak up or have the mechanism to do so. Taking time out to reflect on our concerns and our practice is not valued. There are some great initiatives out there, but unless the fundamentals are in place to allow safe speaking up repeated harm will continue to happen.

Included in the blog are several resources to help Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) feed in to the process. The graphic below has been developed to support AHPs to consider the different ways they may be able to evidence the impact of new working practices. It includes a section on safety, encouraging people to reflect and report on any errors or any actions that have either resulted in harm or improved safety.

Myths and misunderstandings about prevalent mechanisms to achieve excellence in healthcare.

Ideas about resilient systems are now becoming better known in the healthcare community, but the most common question asked is “this is great but how do I put it into practice?” CARe QI provides the answers. The aim of CARe QI is to help people to apply the insights of resilient systems and ‘Safety II’ to the design, implementation and evaluation of quality improvement interventions. It is a structured collection of information, tools, guidance and documents that helps you to develop interventions to strengthen system resilience and in turn improve quality and safety. In the handbook you will find an overview of the arguments for improving quality through resilience, followed by step by step guidance in applying the method and downloadable worksheets to help you to document your own project. There are four main steps to CARe QI – setting up the project, capturing work as done, describing resilience in everyday work and choosing resilience interventions and outcome measures. The foundation of CARe QI is that you understand your clinical system in depth before starting to design and implement interventions.