Talking: Frontline staff making changes: learning from CLAHRC Northwest London Event

Yesterday over 120 healthcare staff, patients, academics and industry partners came together to share up to date news about improving services on the front-line as part of the winter CLAHRC for Northwest London Collaborative Learning and Delivery Event.

Keynote: Professor Tony Bell, CEO at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, exhorted staff to be bold and be systematic in making change.  He admitted his presentation will not make a difference… YOU WILL!  Clearly a fan of new innovations, he demonstrated that technology can help (such as the Da Vinci Surgical Robot), but pointed out that evidence based improvement does not have to be expensive (Duct tape is more cost effective than Cryotherapy for warts).

“People don’t want to wait 15 years for new practices to be normal practice … it may take a long time for new devices to get to market, but it shouldn’t take a long time for us to make changes.”

Professor Derek Bell, Director of the NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London said this CLAHRC has gone further than ever before to cross boundaries and increase joint working in the sector.  He extolled the benefits of the CLAHRC approach demonstrating:

• sustained >95% COPD Care Bundle compliance over a year after the funding ended (Northwest London Hospitals),
• >7000 medication passports distributed that were designed by patients for patients (Imperial College Healthcare), and
• data that staff receptiveness to involving patients in making improvement has increased over time (NWL Sector-wide).

Other highlights:

A GORGEOUS website: itchysneezywheezy.co.uk

which offers education and advice to patients, parents and professionals of all persuasions who are interested in childhood allergy.  The Itchy Sneezy Wheezy project reported how they’ve achieved a statistically significant increase in website hits, and how their multi-organisation partnership approach has helped them generate a successful business case to extend allergy clinics into local communities.  The project is led by Prof John Warner, Imperial College and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

Improvement methods making improvements:

Improving Prescribing and Information for the Elderly project at The Hillingdon Hospital:  The project manager, Susan Barber, outlined her experience of making medication review more robust and consistent.  She identified methods like spending time walk the floor to understand what happens in practice, mapping processes to identify issues that can or should be resolved, using the strength of peer-to-peer influence to change behaviour, and using Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to test changes in practice at a small scale.

Dr Alan Poots, Information Analyst at the CLAHRC told projects to “Use improvement methods to let the system speak”.

CLAHRC NWL 2012 Fellows making an impact:

Johan Van Wijgerden, Public Health Manager in Ealing, demonstrated how childhood vaccinations increased through using the same quality improvment methods that are often assumed to be only useful in hospitals and industry.

Anthony Laverty, academic participant from Imperial College, tweeted: @CLAHRC_NWL How to win hearts and minds? Feeding their own data back to people helps a lot

More about CLAHRC NWL approach and methods here.

In News:

• CLAHRC NWL is current putting patients at the heart of its second wave CLAHRC bid development process.
• Cathy Howe (ME!), Programme Lead at CLAHRC NWL, has won an NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Fellowship.  Reporting via @cathgreenhalgh and www.cathyhowe.net.
• Dr Tom Woodcock, Senior Information Analyst at CLAHRC NWL, has won a Health Foundation post-doc Improvment Science Fellowship.
• 11 new CLAHRC NWL Fellowships  have been awarded for 2013.

The event was held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, near Regent’s Park.