Staff honoured for commitment to quality and improvement

James Qualtrough | September 19, 2012 | 0 Comments

Staff at Health and Social Services are being honoured for their commitment to delivering outstanding work to help achieve the best outcomes for patients and clients this week through the organisation’s Quality Improvement Awards.

This year, nine teams of staff from across the organisation have been shortlisted in three different categories, and have been selected from over 20 teams overall. Today, staff from the shortlisted teams will present their projects to judges in the Halliwell Theatre in the hospital’s Education Centre.

This year, the awards have, been re-branded as the Quality Improvement Awards (QIA). Established in 1993 and formerly known as the Quality Awards, they are held every two years by the Health and Social Services Department to promote, recognise and reward innovation in practice.

Chief Nurse Rose Naylor, part of the organising team for the Quality Improvement Awards, said “This is an important event in our calendar as not only does it showcase some of the fantastic work of our staff, but it also provides inspiration to others. The awards were categorised this year to reflect our key priorities, which is to keep people safe, provide excellent customer care and ensure what we do demonstrates good value for money. It is great to see the range of nominations from across the organisation representing the diversity of services we provide”

The successful entries to go forward for judging were all selected after a detailed short listing and scoring process.

The winning teams are awarded money to invest in further developing their services. There is a prize for the winner each individual category and from the three winners an overall winner will be selected. The overall winner will receive £1,000 and each category winner £750. The category winners will be announced today, and the overall winner of all three categories will be announced at the department’s Achievement Awards evening on Friday 21 September.

Ms Naylor added “We were very pleased to receive in excess of 20 entries this year, all of which were of high calibre.

“Of the 20 plus entries, nine teams are going through to the next stage of the process, three in each category. The short listing team met recently and had the onerous task of selecting the final nine. Unfortunately, not everyone could be selected, but the breadth of the work we have seen is a credit to all HSSD staff. The team were very impressed by all the projects submitted, not only the quality and calibre of the work but also the demonstrable commitment to service improvement particularly to the benefit of those in our care.”

On Wednesday 19 September, all the finalists for the nominated projects will be invited to present their projects to a group of judges in the Halliwell Theatre, and all staff are welcome to attend the presentations. Judges for the event are assistant minster for HSSD, John Refault, CEO of MIND Jersey James Le Feuvre and John Medway.

Minister for Health and Social Services, Deputy Anne Pryke, said “I’m delighted by the calibre of the projects that have been shortlisted this year. These awards are very important since they reward many teams of staff for their innovative service changes as well as the tireless work they do for health and social care in the Island.”

The three categories are client safety, customer care and value for money, and the nominees short-listed in each of them are:

Client safety:
1. STORM team (Skills based training on risk management for staff dealing with individuals who may express suicidality or self harm)

STORM provides risk assessment of suicide/self-harm training to front line mental health staff, general and acute staff and partner agencies from a range of voluntary charities and States of Jersey services. STORM aims to improve patient/client safety and contribute towards the reduction of the suicide rate in Jersey.

2. Medical Handovers Team – Quality Improvements
The team developed three simple clinical tools based on Royal College of Physicians guidelines to improve the quality of doctors’ handovers. These included a highly visible medical handover sticker to aid out-of-hours teams at weekends, nights and bank holidays.

3. PROMPT team:
PROMPT stands for Practical Obstetric Multi Professional Training. It is a programme of ‘in-house’ obstetric emergency training comprising of lectures, drills and workshops which has been adapted to the needs of the Jersey Maternity Unit. PROMPT training enables delivery of the highest standards of emergency care and the safest and best outcomes possible for our mothers and babies.

Customer care:
1. Special Needs Services Day Services: The Big Say survey.
In 2011, Special Needs Day Services took part in a consultation process, facilitated by a UK organisation called Heartfelt Limited. The consultation was undertaken to enable the people who attend SNS Day Services ‘Opportunities to have a real say over the future direction of day services in Jersey’. An important part of this process included ensuring that each and every individual, no matter what their level of communication, was heard and listened to.

2. The Childhood Immunisation Team
A new immunisation system for Jersey was rolled out in January 2011 following extensive work to improve it. After its first year, statistics from the Child Health Computer show immunisation coverage figures in Jersey higher than those of England, Scotland and Wales.

3. Midwives working with GPs (Cleveland Clinic)
The development of a new model of antenatal care, where women see both a GP and a named community midwife, at their GP surgery. The service provides both continuity of care and the opportunity for women to build a relationship with their midwife.

Value for Money:
1. Department of Speech and Language Therapy – the Early Years Team
The Language for Life strategy was developed in response to increasing referral rates of children to the Speech and Language Therapy Service. Research evidence shows poor communication skills cost society dearly through poor educational attainment, mental health issues, poor employment prospects and youth crime. The strategy has developed a partnership approach between parents, States Services and private and third sectors to promote all children’s language development in the early years through a shared understanding of and responsibility for speech, language and communication development between agencies, and early identification of children who require targeted and specialist intervention.

2. The Eye Team – use of Mydriasert eye-drops in the Day Surgery Unit
The team used these eye drops to replace multiple eye drops for pre-surgery cataract patients. This move has saved both patients and staff time.

3. The Emergency Admissions Unit – Development Programme
The planning, implementation and ongoing development of the Emergency Assessment Unit has resulted in significant improvement of quality of service provided to the public in Jersey, and has demonstrated ongoing value for money. Since opening, the EAU has provided a streamlined 24 hour service, utilising the skills of nursing, medical and allied health professionals to ensure patients are seen at the right time, in the right place by the right person.
All patients are assessed by a member of nursing staff within 15 minutes of arrival.