Visit from East London Foundation Trust colleagues
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A mental health quality improvement (QI) learning event took place on Monday 28th November 2016. The purpose of this event was to inform further development of the local QI MH Programme.
The QI programme have built a strong working relationship with the ELFT leadership team, who have won many commendations and awards for their QI programme. ELFT aspire to provide care of the highest quality, in collaboration with those who use their services. As an organisation ELFT embrace continuous improvement and learning.
45 people participated and attended the workshops run by ELFT team. Workshops focused on 4 different topics:
- Capacity and capability building at scale
- Supporting frontline project teams
- Engaging and involving staff and service users in QI
- Redesigning systems to support improvement
ELFT presented their support structure for teams and consistency of their approach with very clear structure they have to support implementation from Board level to Programme to Project. Importance of engagement and development opportunities for staff and service users were highlighted. Giving everyone a voice and bringing staff and service users together to improve and re-design the way that care is provided. ELFT have demonstrated sustained and widespread reduction of incidents of harm from violence of around 50% which has helped in reducing staff vacancies. Data systems, communication tools and systems enablers (stopping work of lower value) enthused many workshop attendees as these facilitate ease of access to resources and could potentially relieve some of the stress of producing charts and diagrams for QI projects.
Putting all the learning from this event into practice will mean that we have to think differently, be innovative and give everyone at every level the skills they need to lead change. Building this culture will not be easy, but we can make our services more effective by focusing on what matters most and by bringing service users and staff together.
Messages and Testimonials
“I really appreciated the opportunity not only to hear from the ELFT team, learn from their experiences and potentially steal some of their ideas; but also to meet others in Lothian who are engaged with QI.”
“I was really excited to hear more about the QI Life site and very much hope we can use it in Lothian and gain from the development work they have already done and also save staff time and support scale up of successful QI projects by providing a website accessible to all that contains tools to support and share this work.”
“ELFT has learnt a lot from Scotland in developing its approach to improving quality. It’s a real privilege for us to come and learn from the excellent work being done in NHS Lothian, and the wider Scottish health and social care system, to improve outcomes and experience of care through quality improvement. We were really impressed by the depth of dialogue during the workshops, and the level of engagement and passion that’s clearly present across all the staff to make a real difference, using quality improvement as the mechanism. Thanks for the opportunity to come up and be re-energised with you all…”