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

The NE and Cumbria MSOs (pharmacists from all sectors) meet bimonthly to share medication safety concerns, discuss incidents and work collaboratively to improve patient safety. Experience of QI within the group is quite limited and only three of the members belong to Q. Safety concerns and themes are often discussed but actions to prevent recurrence are limited and vary locally depending on the MSO’s QI experience. This project aims to improve the QI knowledge and skills of the MSOs across the region through teaching, practical experience and coaching. The teaching will be based on validated methods from providers who are happy to share materials for this purpose and will supported by coaching. It is hoped that the knowledge and skills gained will be used in collaborative working to improve patient medication safety in response to incidents and themes. It is also hoped that the individuals participating in this work will go on to become Q members and increase our network pharmacist numbers.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The main objectives of this project are to:

• Increase MSOs’ knowledge of QI methodology through study days, workshops, peer support, coaching, mentoring and on-line resources
• To share this knowledge further at MSOs’ base Trusts
• To carry out collaborative QI work in response to common medication safety issues

Faculty would be mainly local volunteers from participating organisations including Q members from different professional backgrounds with experience in QI. Local Trust QI groups and networks would also be encouraged to get involved. Trust venues would be used to minimise costs.

This would be measured in the following ways:

• Participant questionnaires to assess knowledge before and after training
• Participant questionnaires to assess confidence before and after training
• Number of collaborative QI projects carried out in the region in the year after training
• Number of NE pharmacists enrolled as members of Q

How will the project be delivered?

It is hoped that local Q members and other QI experts will help to deliver training and share their resources. We hope to create a faculty of interested parties representing all the primary and secondary care organisations who are members of the MSO network, including mental health trusts and the ambulance service. The MSO is a well-established network of pharmacists who have worked together for several years now and have a common interest in improving medication safety for our patients. Many of our pharmacists move into new roles in neighbouring Trusts therefore a collaborative approach to safety can only be an advantage. There should be no risk attached to this project as long as the whole NE and Cumbria MSO Network is engaged in and dedicates time to this project.

It would be useful to hear from any Q members who already have material that could be adapted or who have run cross-boundary initiatives like this in the past.

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

This project will hopefully demonstrate how QI capability can be improved across boundaries within the NHS by including MSOs from CCGs, acute trusts, mental health and ambulance service. Members also have links with nursing home and GP practice pharmacists for even wider spread of capability perhaps by using a train the trainer approach in the long term. The success of the training would be measured in the number of QI projects undertaken across the region including poster presentations, workshop sessions at events and perhaps even publications. Other measures such as participant confidence and knowledge acquired would give an idea of the success of the training programme. It would be easy to share any learning through the Q network, national MSO and pharmacy events, intranet forums and MSO webexes.