Q Exchange

Quality coach development programme

This projects aims to co-design, and make freely available, a quality coach development programme to support the rapid development of QI capability and support service integration.

Read comments 36 Project updates 5

Winning idea
2019

Meet the team

Also:

Chad Hockey - North H&F PCN
Dimitrios Fragkoudis - CLCH
Matthew Mead - H&F CCG
Eddie Davidson - CHE GP Federation

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

Even well trained staff need support to run QI projects. Understanding the theory is not enough when applying QI, this is especially true in multi-organisation projects. Easy access to a colleague who can help a team apply QI approaches in a practical and pragmatic way is a key to unlocking widespread continuous improvement.

A quality coach is a front line worker, skilled in QI methodology and coaching techniques, with protected time to support colleagues running QI projects. Quality coaches are a vital ingredient in successful quality improvement organisations. Many trusts have a team of QI experts, but they are a limited resource and can be hard to access.

Existing development programmes are expensive and can be hard to access. We aim to provide a free, easily replicable, high quality development programme to build cohorts of quality coaches to support QI in organisations and across systems of care.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The primary project objective will be to develop a project-based Quality Coach development programme (based on the Model for Improvement) that can be picked up by any QI team and delivered as either an in-house programme, or as a system-wide programme in support of integration projects.

The products will include:

Standard training materials: Presentations, facilitation instructions, printable materials
Customisable comms materials
Programme materials: Guidance for setup, delivery & evaluation; guidance for how to customise the programme to different settings; templates for applicant contracts; evaluation framework
Guidance to support a community of quality coaches

The benefits of the project will be:

Q members will have free access to a training product that can be adapted to their local environment.
Local systems (PCNs/STPs/etc.) will have a vehicle for running multi-organisation improvement projects that develops sustainable improvement capability and effective working relationships

How will the project be delivered?

The core principles:

The programme structure and content to be co-designed by willing Q members through a design group – funded by Q-Exchange
Pilot sites determined by interest and willingness
- A pilot site will be hosted and delivered by the CLCH Academy in partnership with relevant organisations to support development of Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in North West London and/or North Central London
- Additional sites if enough willing participants
- Pilot delivery will be managed and resourced by local QI teams – i.e. using existing resources
Final products will be developed by the project team in collaboration with design group.

Project phases:

Engage
- Recruit participants for design group
- Define pilot area(s)
Design
- Agree format and structure
- Develop and refine content
- Define facilitator requirements
Pilot
- Participants recruited
- Programme delivered & evaluated
Refine
- Update content & guidance
- Product development
Share
- Share via website

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

In addition to providing a free resource for all Q members, this project has potential to generate useful learning about the value of QI based interventions in the development of integrated systems.

For example, we are keen to establish a pool of Quality coaches across our local system(s) that can be called upon to support QI work occurring within larger integration programmes as well as supporting their local organisation’s QI work. Whilst this isn’t the direct aim of this project, the learning about how QI can support system integration and learning about how to build improvement capability to support systems improvement would be shared.

It is proposed that a Quality Coach Special Interest Group is established in the Q website for the project to share progress and learning through the process.

All final products will be initially shared via this SIG.

How you can contribute

Volunteers to participate in design group
Volunteers to pilot in their local organisation/system
Willingness to contribute experience & content
Ideas for how to make this even better

Plan timeline

31 Dec 2019	Design group recruited, pilot sites selected
31 Mar 2020	Programme content complete
30 Jun 2020	Pilot(s) start
31 Dec 2020	Pilots completed and evaluated
31 Mar 2021	Products development and shared

Project updates

28 Sep 2023

Well, we finally did it!

I couldn’t be prouder to announce that we have just released the Quality Coach Development Programme. Follow this link to access the resources.

It has taken 4 years from inception to delivery but, as you will see, it has been worth the wait! I can’t honestly believe that we have managed to develop such a high quality product and could not be more proud to have been part of the (massive) team that was involved in its co-design and development. In the end we have had 42 people from 24 different organisations working together to make this happen.

I have been blown away by the amazing support, commitment and effort of everyone that has been involved. Thank you to everyone in the Q community that voted for this project, and to everyone that helped us to make this what it is. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Do join the Coaching Improvement SIG to get the latest updates and to connect with others who are interested in using this product.

Thank you also to those who joined the webinar today for the launch of the Quality Coach Development Programme. The slides we used for the session are saved on this SIG: Download them here

We’ll be sharing the recording as soon as it’s ready and look out for a blog from @hannahpearson very soon.

Best wishes,

Jem
26 Oct 2020
Hi all,

I’m pleased to say that we can provide a promising update for the Quality Coach Development Programme. I’m working with Jem on getting this programme up and running.

In September we held our second co-design workshop, which was attended by around 15 Q Members and improvement practitioners. The outcome of the workshop was an agreement on how to take this programme forward, including the structure of the programme and support for virtual-delivery.

Since then we have began to work in smaller groups on the development of subject-specific content through the 6 different workstreams of the programme.
1. Programme Management (getting this to a usable and useful final ‘off-the-shelf’ teaching resource)
2. Deeper Understanding of QI
3. Leading Change
4. Self Reflection
5. Coaching Skills
6. Working with Groups
We’re looking to have fortnightly workshops around these workstreams in order to drive this work forward. Our aim is to have an outline of aims, learning outcomes, expected pre-requisite knowledge and indicative content for the taught workstreams (2-6) in the coming weeks – indeed we have this for some workstreams already. Following this, we will begin to write the content. We have a good number of people involved in many of the workstreams but are still looking for additional support and input in the following subject areas;
- Self-reflection
- Working with groups
- Coaching skills
If this is your area of interest, please get in touch!

We are aiming to co-produce the teaching materials over the next couple of months, with a product ready in January/February. A pilot of the programme is planned for Spring 2021 in North West London and planning and recruitment for this will begin in the new year at the latest. We are keen to support others to pilot this product in other regions within the UK.

If you are interested in supporting this programme or running a pilot, please don’t hesitate to get in touch – we’re always looking for more people to support us!

Looking forward to working with you.

Best wishes,

Sid
5 Aug 2020

Hi all,

I hope you are all well and managing to navigate your way through the current situation in a positive and healthy way.

We are planning to restart this project following a lengthy pause due to the Covid-19 crisis. Please find below a summary of progress since the last update and our intentions for restarting the project:

We held our first design group meeting on the 13th February. We had a good turnout for the session and the group felt that it was a productive session. A summary of the workshop can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/y2yxdlvc

During the session, the group reviewed some existing QI & coaching programmes, agreed the purpose and objectives for the Quality Coach Development Programme and were also able to make progress with the intended structure and programme content areas. We identified 6 working groups to take the design process forwards and had volunteers for each group.

Sadly, there has been very little progress since as the Covid-19 situation began shortly afterwards and many of the participants (myself included) were redeployed to focus on other priorities.

We are hoping to reassemble the design group virtually in September with a view to review the outputs from the initial design group meeting and consider how to take this programme forwards in the post-covid world where face to face training has been significantly reduced in favour of virtual mediums.

We are also keen to incorporate ideas and learning from some of the other Q-exchange projects (e.g psychology for improvement) as there are great minds doing some similar thinking there too.

On a personal note, I have found this project to be an exciting opportunity to work with great people with a shared passion for improvement. The collaborative approach has been essential for making this project work and I would greatly value your feedback, comments and suggestions for how we move this project forwards in the ‘new world’.

Looking forward to working with you all again soon,

Best wishes,

Jem
30 Jan 2020

Hi all,

Just in case you haven’t signed up to the Hexitime platform (or joined the email list) here is the link for the first design group session on the 13th February.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/quality-coach-programme-design-group-1-tickets-90337793773

Agenda is included in the link.

If you can’t join us on the day, please submit your ideas and suggestions via the hexitime platform for us to discuss on the day.

Some great input received so far from others who are running coaching training so hoping to have a great session.
1 Dec 2019

Hi all,

Apologies for the delayed start… Very excited to get started on this project, but there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day!

I have made a start on a project page on the hexitime platform (thanks for the suggestion John): https://hexitime.com/team/quality-coach-programme

I am hoping to use this as a working area for the project as there are some useful collaboration functions available.

For now there is just a chat area and I have added some background reading that I have been doing around existing programmes and research on QI Coaches (feel free to shout if you have things to share and I’ll add them). I’m hoping to add some more details soon such as a trello board so everyone can see progress and also a survey monkey so we can get feedback from the group on how to shape the programme.

Next steps are to recruit volunteers for the first design group session in January and work out what we want to achieve from that first session (date TBC). I am planning to share my thoughts on how the project could progress (just trying to get them in a coherent order) but if you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to working with you all,

Jem

Comments

Jatinder Harchowal 7 Feb 2020

Dear Jem

Sadly can't make the event on 13 Feb but would be keen to hear how that goes and how we can be involved.

Jat (Royal Marsden)
Pam Copeland 14 Nov 2019

Congratulations and very well done to all of you. Look forward to hearing about your project as it progresses.

Best Wishes to all in the project

Pam Copeland
Tamar Koch 14 Nov 2019

Congratulations!! This is a fabulous project and much needed. Our experience (Islington GP Federation's Quality Improvement Support Team) in working with GP practices is that it's so hard to embed QI work in business as usual without someone acting in a facilitative/coaching role, which until now we haven't been able to resource. We are looking to this model for the future, especially in thinking about the increasing work that GPs will be doing at PCN level. We would be very interested in being one of your pilot sites. And if we can support in any other way, please get in touch.
Joe Croombs 20 Oct 2019

This is such an important area of work, which I feel as a Q and coach will if you are successful you will create something amazing. I really look forward to see how it progresses and fully support, if I can help in any way please get in contact and fingers crossed for a successful outcome for your shortlist.
Sarah Williams 11 Oct 2019

Hi Jem,

Sorry it's taken a while to be in touch. We've done this in Solent this year and it's been much more successful that I could have hoped. In terms of what we covered, Robin can tell you as he supported it. In terms of what we've learnt in terms of what people needed, happy to have a chat. Headlines..

- we kept it fluid and that worked. I think each cohort will be different and so we will continue to adapt to the groups. This makes a generic set of materials slightly harder but still doable.

- the demand was more about coaching and leadership than QI methods. The groups will form more of an extension to our team rather than trying to be local experts.

- it isn't something that can be a 'course' and then stop. They have all asked and will need ongoing mentoring and support - that is this year's project, funded by HEE.

- we will soon have a feedback film with some reflections of our current cohort. We are now out to advert for cohort 2, and are including patients on this one.

In terms of what you are proposing, I know the steer of the HF is that we create materials that people can just pick up and use. Our Q Exchange project this year promised the same for a patient QI module and it turns out it is really hard. Every organisation does QI a bit differently which means the offer to coaches or patients or anyone is different. This has proved a significant issue that we hadn't anticipated.

I've gone on long enough - really happy to chat through if you need more detail. It has been a great experience for us, so good luck

Sarah
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 11 Oct 2019
  
  What fantastic feedback. Thank you Sarah. You are always so helpful - I’m really keen to learn from your experience, both about the programme but also the challenges of creating standard materials..
  
  Will you be coming to the Q event in November?
jennifer wilson 7 Oct 2019

This is a great concept and like many areas we are developing QI coaches as part of our newly published Quality Strategy - We would be delighted to support codesign !

Best Wishes,

Jenny
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 8 Oct 2019
  
  Great!
  
  Looking forward to working with you.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Jem
Robin Davis 3 Oct 2019

This is such an important area of work. Lots of organisations are currently working on this so working together we can really create something amazing. I am really looking forward to working with everyone to develop this idea. Fingers crossed for a successful outcome
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 7 Oct 2019
  
  Thanks Robin,
  
  I really hope this goes ahead. I know that anything we produce locally won't be half as good as a co-designed programme with the expertise of the whole Q!
  
  Fingers crossed enough people are interested.
  
  Jem
Claire Hogg 1 Oct 2019

I'm really pleased to see this proposal shortlisted. North Mid would love to work with colleagues across North Central London to build QI capacity & capability
Lisa Jamieson 24 Sep 2019

Hi team

Congratulations on being shortlisted!
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 1 Oct 2019
  
  Thanks Lisa,
  
  We are very excited! Hopefully we will get enough people interested to get some votes!
John Lodge 20 Sep 2019

Congratulations on being shortlisted - I like this practical idea. It looks like lots of Londoners are interested in this too? Could we develop regional faculties of quality coaches to share expertise in a local geography?
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 1 Oct 2019
  
  Hi John,
  
  That sounds like a good idea. We were originally thinking that we should be working more collaboratively across boundaries to develop QI expertise and to build shared resources. A regional faculty could be a great way to build in sustainability for trained Quality coaches.
  
  Happy to discuss further if you want to bounce ideas.
Sarah Williams 25 Jul 2019

Hi Jem

We've done this in Solent this year - helped by Robin as it happens. It's been really successful - happy to chat about things we've learned and what has worked.

Good luck with this

Sarah
Jenny Davis 23 Jul 2019

Hi

This is a great idea. We at MSE Hospitals Group are currently looking of how we further develop QI coaches across our STP. We would definitely be interested in knowing more about this, and collaborating

Thanks

Jen
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 23 Jul 2019
  
  Thanks Jenny,
  
  Good to have you on board. We are just finalising the bid so please let us know if you have any suggestions to improve it.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Jem
Yvonne Mcwean 15 Jul 2019

Hi Jem

Great idea. Like many others we are developing a QI coach programme at Hampshire Hospitals. Would be really interested in getting involved to support this. There is so much transferable learning so it would be helpful to develop a consistent framework to the role of the QI coach
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 15 Jul 2019
  
  Hi Yvonne,
  
  Great! Looking forward to working with you.
Adele Coulthard 15 Jul 2019

Hi Jem,

This is something we are starting to do across the North. There are some Trusts where coaching for improvement is well embedded, some Trusts where it is just starting off and we (the NHSE/I team) are piloting an approach with a Trust that has limited exposure to applying formal QI. Really happy to join your group and share what we are doing in this part of the world.

Thanks
Adele
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 15 Jul 2019
  
  Thanks Adele,
  
  That sounds very helpful - looking forward to hearing more about it.
  
  Regards,
  
  Jem
Jatinder Singh 10 Jul 2019

This looks like a great idea and I would possibly be able to support design and testing myself with the work I do and encourage involvement of my colleagues at NHS Arden and GEM. Please keep me informed of developments.

I think it would be useful to get as many people / organisations involved in the design - as this will help to spread the use of the end product. If we can get other organisations endorsing it and acknowledged as involved in designing the products - this will encourage more people to utilise the end products.

Best wishes

Jatinder
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 10 Jul 2019
  
  Thanks Jatinder,
  
  I'm glad to have your support.
  
  I agree that we should get a broad group to co-design the programme. There are already some great programmes out there which we could build on if people are willing to share and collaborate. A quality coaching programme is something we were originally looking to build ourselves, but when we realised that other Trusts were also exploring this idea, it seemed obvious that if we worked together on this, it could be better than anything we might do on our own.
  
  Add to that the opportunity to get people from across the local systems to train and learn together whilst working on system improvement and it seemed like a no-brainer to run this as a collaborative approach.
  
  The response so far has been fantastic, with people from across the country offering sharing and support in both design and testing so I am hopeful that we can get this idea off the ground.
Robin Davis 10 Jul 2019

Hi Jem

This is a great idea and I would be keen to work with you on this. I would be very happy to test the content across a few other organisations. It would be great to get some products developed that we can all use.

happy to help in any way

Rob
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 10 Jul 2019
  
  Thanks Robin,
  
  Your support is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to working with you on this.
Lisa Jamieson 10 Jul 2019

Hi Jem

This mirrors what we have found in Yorkshire. Delivering training alone is not enough to embed QI in organisations. I'm really interested in your project and we would be happy to pilot in the Huddersfield area.

Best wishes,

Lisa
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 10 Jul 2019
  
  Thanks Lisa,
  
  Great to have you on board - lets hope that we can align this with your BTS bid.
Anna Burhouse 2 Jul 2019

Great idea and so needed! I’d happily contribute to the design and testing stages. I think it would be good to tease out exactly what the core competencies of improvement coaching are and what the overlap is with business or personal coaching. I’ve been mulling this over for a while and would happily join in a group to take this forward.

Let me know how I can help.

warm wishes

Anna
Nicola Ballingall 1 Jul 2019

Hi Jem,

I am doing a presentation about our programme at the North London STP event on 11th July, will you be there?

Nicola
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 9 Jul 2019
  
  Hi Nicola,
  
  I was due to be but I understand that the event has been cancelled. Still keen to hear more about your programme though - can you send any details?
Claire Hogg 1 Jul 2019

Joining forces across North Central London to share skills and develop staff in QI is an excellent way to make the most of our limited resources. North Mid is fully behind this.
Kate Pryde 1 Jul 2019

Such a real challenge for us with no money, which equals no time.

Love to hear more about this and be involved as a potential site - Southampton

Look forward to hearing more from you.
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 9 Jul 2019
  
  Fab - thanks Kate,
  
  Great to have you on board.
Nicola Ballingall 28 Jun 2019

In!
This sounds like a great way to train staff while they remain part of the service.

At Camden and Islington, we have developed our own training program, with sessions such as Service User Involvement and The Psychology of Change. I would be happy to help to share resources and will speak to my team about how else we can get involved.
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 28 Jun 2019
  
  Thanks Nicola,
  
  Great to have you on board. Would love to hear more about your current programme.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Jem