What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to your chosen theme?

We hear feedback from front line staff (bands 2-5) that they are unable to participate in the courses and initiatives run and supported by the Cumbria Learning and Improvement Collaborative (CLIC). This is due to lack of resource on wards and staff being unable to control their own diaries. As a result of this, those we tend to reach with our continuous improvement work are at leadership level. To sustain continuous improvement, we know that ownership from the staff doing the day-to-day work is essential to success of any improvement project.

The current model of delivery only enhances the ‘top down’ hierarchical approach that we wish to move away from. We are also aware that in doing this, we miss many of our staff with protected characteristics. Government and trust level statistics show that staff who fall under the majority of the nine protected characteristics are over-represented in roles in lower bands compared to the demographics of England as a whole (NHS Workforce, 2018).

What does your project aim to achieve?

Our project aims to give lower-banded staff working on the front line in a hospital setting the skills to undertake effective improvement work.

We will do this by creating a programme that delivers tools for improvement in a small group setting over the course of an hour, where the outcome is a specific piece of improvement. We will then deliver the programme in different settings and gather feedback from participants in terms of how confident they feel about using the tools to identify and implement improvements.

Long term, we will assess how access to and knowledge of improvement tools impacts on efficiency and safety. In Cumbria and elsewhere, there is a focus on transformation work which can make it difficult to encourage continuous improvement, meaning improvement efforts are often not sustained. By holding a teaching session and then leaving staff with the materials, know-how, and continued support we will empower staff to embed their own culture of improvement at ward level.

How will the project be delivered?

The project will be delivered using our current workforce of facilitators and upskilling other staff members into facilitation roles to deliver the one hour sessions. Across the service improvement team, we have specialists in data, engagement, human factors, patient experience, and strategy who currently support wide ranging improvement projects and have experience of delivering and facilitating courses. We have previously delivered many Rapid Process Improvement Workshops in acute and ward settings but find that increasingly, managers are finding it harder to release staff for a full week of improvement work, which has led us to consider new ways to deliver our tools.

Our goal is that by delivering one hour bursts, more staff will be able to participate and learn first hand about improvement with little impact on resource and capacity, and will have the knowledge to be able to become Q members themselves, building a stronger front line Q network.

What and how is your project going to share learning throughout?

We have identified gaps in staff that we are reaching with our improvement work. This project aims to directly address those gaps and strengthen understanding of Continuous Improvement across the wider workforce. We will tailor our sessions to address specific requirements and ensure that every member of a team receives face to face dedicated learning time with our facilitators.

In turn, we will ensure that participants receive the skills they need to share their learning across their own networks as well as up to their team leaders using the same engagement approaches already in place as part of our other improvement programmes.

We have also received feedback from staff that we have previously worked with, who have gone on to apply to be Q members that they feel the individual nature of their Q membership is something that they can take with them wherever they go, and is unique to them and their own improvement journey. We will share this with the teams that we work with.