Clare Ashby
Head of Safety
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust
England - Yorkshire and Humber
Biography
I am a nurse working for Yorkshire Ambulance Service as their Head of Safety and Infection Prevention and Control Lead. The role is very varied and includes staff safety as well as patient safety. I enjoy working in this challenging environment. Our team reviews investigation and learning from reported incidents, which can give us a unique opportunity to listen to staff and patients, make changes and improvements and monitor progress. I am interested in safety culture and how to promote continous improvements for staff and patient safety. I believe that caring for your staff has a direct effect on error reduction, productivity and patient experience.
Q Exchange ideas
Increasing quality improvement (QI) capability amongst those clinicians who deliver direct care to patients
Improving quality is about making healthcare safe, effective, patient-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. In the history of the NHS, there has never been such a focus on improving the quality of health services (The Health Foundation 2013) and it is widely agreed that staff engagement is an essential ingredient of any sustainable approach to quality improvement (QI) (NHS Employers 2017, The Health Foundation 2011). However it has also been suggested that QI initiatives in the NHS have not generally secured the full engagement of clinicians (The Health Foundation 2011). This is of particular significance to the nursing profession who, with over 319,000 nurses employed across England make up the largest staff group in the NHS, out numbering their medical and allied health professional colleagues by almost 3 to 1 (NHS Digital 2017) but can also be assumed of all clinicians; with perhaps the exception of medical staff who maintain strong links with their clinical work throughout their careers and take part in QI during their training and beyond. We are looking to understand the barriers that stop frontline staff engaging and leading improvement work and develop enablers that help to address and remove those barriers.
Blog posts
An integrative approach to local quality improvement community growth
Clare Ashby, Head of Safey and IPC Lead at the Improvement Academy in Yorkshire and Humber, discusses her team's approach to growing the Q community in their area
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