Developing Improvement Skills – Our Latest Paper on Embedding Quality Improvement

We’re pleased to announce the publication of Developing Improvement Skills; our latest paper on how health and care organisations can work with us to embed quality improvement.

The paper comes in response to two recent national publications; Making the Case for Quality Improvement: Lessons for NHS Boards and Leaders and Building Capacity by The King’s Fund and The Health Foundation, and NHS Improvement’s Capability for Improvement: Embedding Quality Improvement Skills in NHS Providers.

Speaking on the publication, Lesley Massey, Director, said:

“Quality improvement remains a major priority for health and care if we are to deliver safe, high quality and efficient care for patients, carers and service users, and we welcome the recent publication of these two reports by The King’s Fund, Health Foundation and NHS Improvement.

“Our own paper, Developing Improvement skills, sets out a clear vision for how AQuA’s work can support these recommendations, and how we can work alongside our members and customers to build capability and capacity for improvement across all staff roles and levels.”

Read our report here

In the paper, you can read more about:

• How our offers align to the 10 Lessons for NHS leaders
• Recommended capabilities, engagement and improvement outcomes for all levels of staff
• Practical approaches to embedding quality improvement in your organisation
• Key principles that guide our work with members and customers.

In March 2018 we’re also pleased to be partnering with The King’s Fund for Quality Improvement in Health and Care: Lessons on Leading & Implementing Solutions; an exciting event exploring successful approaches and strategies for embedding quality improvement in health and care.

We’ll be welcoming some of the leading quality improvement lights from across the North West, and AQuA members can also receive a 20% discount off their booking.

For more information about the event and how to claim the discount, please visit the event page.

AQuA Work on Mental Health Restraint Reduction Recognised by Care Quality Commission

We’re pleased to announce that we were recently recognised by health regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for our work to reduce incidences of restraint across acute mental health settings in the North West. 

In their recent best practice paper, A Focus on Restrictive Intervention Reduction Programmes in Inpatient Mental Health Services, the CQC highlight the work of North West Boroughs NHS Foundation Trust as part of our Health Foundation-funded REsTRAIN YOURSELF programme, alongside Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Speaking on the announcement, Paul Greenwood, Mental Health Improvement Advisor, said:

Paul Greenwood,
Mental Health Improvement Advisor

“It’s fantastic to see our work with members recognised by the CQC, and a real credit to the hard work to improve mental health services by staff at North West Boroughs and Mersey Care.

“To have two of our members identified for best practice is a great achievement both for them and the North West, and we continue to work closely with a number of our mental health Trusts to improve care for patients.”

Alongside other best practice examples from across the UK, the paper highlighted North West Borough’s work to improve governance procedures and share learning around restrictive practice across the wider organisation.

For Mersey Care, who we have also supported on mental health restraint reduction, the paper looked at how the Trust developed their No Force First programme to reduce restraint on wards, alongside improving staff sickness.

For more information about our work on Mental Health or restraint reduction, please visit our website.

Alternatively, you can contact Paul Greenwood on paul.greenwood@srft.nhs.uk or via Twitter on @PaulG_AQuA. 

Blog - Thoughts from the Patient First Conference - Kayleigh Price

As the UK's largest patient safety event, the Patient Safety conference brings together patients, families and health and care professionals to share improvements in care. Fresh from the 2017 conference, our Improvement Advisor Kayleigh Price shares some of her highlights from the event.

Kayleigh Price, AQuA Improvement Advisor

Last week I was lucky to attend the annual Patient First conference in London, where alongside my colleagues Andrea McGuinness (@1McGuinness) and Jane Carthey, I was privileged to speak about the Maturity Matrix for the Measurement and Monitoring of Safety.

Our presentation came at the end of an exhilarating and engaging first day to the conference. Whilst there were just so many talks to go into detail on, highlights included a fantastic session by B.Braun Medical on Human Factors, as well as Moving from Safety 1 to Safety 2 from Trevor Date of Atrainability, which discussed how self-awareness and team development can improve the safety of care.

There were also lots of sessions from a number of Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSC’s); with the one from Wessex PSC  around deteriorating patients in non-acute settings, particularly home care environments, standing out in particular.

This posed the question of:

How can we track deterioration effectively in an environment where we are trying to minimise the ‘medicalisation’ of everyday life?

One answer seemed to be soft signals. If a client normally sleeps well but suddenly reports a restless night, this could be considered a flag. It doesn’t mean that they are deteriorating, but that we need to keep an eye on them. The talk was compelling and I can’t wait to get in touch with them directly to find out even more!

Our own talk was the penultimate session of the day in the plenary theatre, which holds up to 500 people (a mildly terrifying prospect!)  By the time we got started it was standing room only!

We were talking about the Safety Measurement and Monitoring Maturity Matrix (SMMMM) a tool designed by Human Factors Consultant Jane Carthey and Nick Downham of WDID, to assist teams with getting started using the Measurement and Monitoring of Safety Framework.

Click here to view an image of the Maturity Matrix

We shared our experience of supporting teams through using the matrix, as well as giving participants a run through of the process of using the tool. I have shared some twitter interactions below:

Day two of the conference was another high energy day packed with sessions. Highlights included a session from Patient Safety Learning's James Titcombe and Jonathan Hazan, about learning from deaths and their new patient safety learning organisation (see @ptsafetylearn for more info).

With the massive number of sessions from PSCs over both days, it was amazing to see the learning coming from these teams. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get around all of the sessions (I’m only one person after all) but I’m really looking forward to working more closely with PSC teams over the next year, as we collaborate nationwide on the Patient Safety Measurement Unit programme.  I’m even more excited for this piece of work now, and I didn’t think that was possible!

Overall the conference was really exciting and I left feeling inspired, engaged and ready to think differently- what more can you really ask for?

Further information on the maturity matrix (and the measurement and monitoring of safety framework) can be found at www.howsafeisourcare.com, or by attending our final sharing session in London on 30 November.

Were you at the conference or want to find out more about the Safety Framework? 

Feel free to share your thoughts with Kayleigh on Twitter via @KayleighPrice14 or Kayleigh.Price@srft.nhs.uk, or via @AQuA_NHS. 

AQuA Lived Experience Affiliate Starts Nursing Training

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) is delighted to share news that Carl O’Loughlin, one of our Lived Experience Affiliates, will be taking his first step into nursing as he begins his training to become a Mental Health nurse at the University of Chester in February 2018.

Carl O'Loughlin, Lived Experience Affiliate

Carl, who started his career training to be a Chartered Accountant, has worked alongside our staff and members for a number of years, to help design our programmes and offers, and ensure patient experience is at the heart of our work. To support him during his studies, Carl has also been awarded one of the prestigious Margaret Parkinson Scholarship’s from the Royal College of Nursing Foundation.

Speaking on the news, Carl said:

“I am absolutely delighted to have been offered a place to begin my Mental Health Nursing degree. I am passionate about mental health care and I want to use my own personal lived experience of severe mental illness to try and make a difference to others suffering similar problems.

“My 'lived experience' roles at the Advancing Quality Alliance, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and CLARCH North West Coast have provided me with invaluable experience and have certainly been the driving force behind me wanting to become a mental health nurse.

“I am also extremely proud and honoured to have been awarded a Margaret Parkinson Scholarship from the Royal College of Nursing Foundation which will support me throughout the 3 years of the course.”

Paul Greenwood, Mental Health Improvement Advisor, said:

“We’re really pleased for Carl and wish him all the best as he takes his first step into nursing. It is a pleasure to work alongside him as part of our Lived Experience Panel as he brings such a wealth of experience to our work, both from his previous career as an accountant and through his own personal experience of mental health.

“We’re delighted that the work with us inspired him to take this decision, and I know he’ll have a lot to offer when he qualifies in the years to come.”

Carl will continue to work with us through the Lived Experience Panel throughout his training. To find out more about the panel, please visit our website, or contact Paul.Greenwood@srft.nhs.uk.

WATCH - Whole System Flow – Pecha Kucha Style

We’re pleased to bring you an exciting ‘Pecha Kucha’ video sharing some of our work and learning around Whole System Flow, presented by our Flow Programme Facilitator Scott Gregory. 

Scott Gregory, Flow Programme Facilitator

What is a 'Pecha Kucha'? It’s Japanese for ‘chit-chat’, and used to describe a fast-paced and concise presentation where 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, with a total run-time of six minutes 40 seconds.

On the back of our 18-month flow discovery programme with The Health Foundation, Scott shares some of our key learning from this, including some do’s and don’ts to successful flow, as well how this has evolved into our new 2017/18 Flow – Improving System Pathways programme with members.

Watch his presentation here

Scott adds:

“Since starting our initial work with The Health Foundation, we’ve really learnt a lot about flow and the many complexities of improving this in practice, and how it often means different things depending on your role and setting.

“Whilst it was quite a challenge to condense so much of this into a Pecha Kucha presentation, it also helped to keep it to our key learning points and what we think is really useful to members.

“We’re now looking to build on and test this work further with members across three pilot systems in Liverpool, Bolton, and Wigan hope to share how some of these findings can help improve care and outcomes for patients across our members and wider partners.”

Feel free to share your thoughts on the presentation via Twitter at @AQuA_NHS, or with Scott directly via @SG_AQuA.

For more information on Flow, please contact out Wendy Lewis, Flow Lead, on Wendy.Lewis@srft.nhs.uk.

RECAP - AQuA Welcomes The King’s Fund’s Chris Ham for Place Based Care

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) were delighted to welcome Professor Chris Ham, Chief Executive of The King’s Fund, for an exciting masterclass exploring pace based health and care.

Chris addressed over 100 senior leaders from across health and social about the ten key design principles for successful place based care, and some of the challenges behind this at the event in Manchester; hosted alongside our partners NHS Mersey Internal Audit Agency (MIAA), NHS North West Leadership Academy (NHS NWLA), and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) North West.

Speaking after the event, Cathy Sloan, Head of System Transformation, said:

“It was fantastic to welcome Chris to Manchester for this masterclass. The King’s Fund have really led the way in the thinking behind place based care in the UK, and it was really good to hear about some of the key principles of how we can deliver these in practice.

“It was also inspiring to hear from our members in St Helens and at the Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership, on how these systems have started to be implemented in their localities.  Sarah Bullock from St Helens Cares and Tim Griffith from Greater Manchester described the very different ways their systems are developing place based care.”

Watch back Chris’s presentation below.

The Journey to Place Based Systems of Care: Learning from what works with @profchrisham #PlaceBasedCare https://t.co/Yd1wgxeyUT

— AQuA (@AQuA_NHS) September 21, 2017

Place based care is where local health and care providers, commissioners, local authorities and other organisations work together to establish coordinated systems and plan their services to address the healthcare needs of their local population.

If you missed the session, you can catch up on some of the key points from the day via our multimedia recap below.

AQuA Exhibiting Analytics Support at North West Informatics Conference

Two of our staff will be exhibiting our analytics work at this week’s Connect Conference in Blackpool, alongside a range of senior informatics colleagues from across the North West health and care sector.

Hosted by Intersystems and the NHS Skills Development Network, ‘Beyond the Boundaries’ takes place at the Hilton Hotel, Blackpool, on Thursday 21 – Friday 22 September.

Our Programme Director Nadine Boczkowski and Principle Business Intelligence Analyst Paul Hawgood will be showcasing our analytics and business intelligence work with our members from across the region.

Speaking ahead of the conference, Nadine said:

“We’re delighted to be attending Connect Conference and are looking forward to hearing about some of current priorities and to share supporting offers and services available to our members across the region.

“There are some fantastic speakers lined up over the two days, and we hope to see some really innovative analytical and technological developments and best practice.”

Sessions throughout the conference will explore a broad range of topics, including digital innovation, using informatics to improve performance and outcomes across health and care, and how to develop the necessary skills behind this now and in the future.

Nadine and Paul will be at Stand 21 in the reception exhibition area over the two days, and will also be taking part in sessions; with many of our member also delivering presentations throughout the conference.

You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulHawgood, or for latest updates follow NHS Skills Development Network @ISDNorthWest.