Q Exchange

Unifying QI across three Trusts in an STP

Three Trusts have formed a hospital group. Each has a different approach to QI. We plan to bring all these together in a unified, easily accessible programme to support clinical pathway redesign.

Read comments 12

Shortlisted idea
2019

Meet the team

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

Mid Essex, Southend and Basildon Hospitals have united to form the Mid and South Essex University Hospitals Group (MSE) as part of the Mid & South Essex STP. They are working together to reconfigure pathways to provide better patient care and utilise resources more efficiently. Each Trust has its own culture, language and approach to QI. We want to unite the staff at all 3 Trusts, through a unified improvement language and culture. This will be vital if we are to succeed with our aspirations to make care pathways better.

In 2017, a small faculty of Quality Service Improvement Redesign (QSIR) Associates was established. It has trained 150 staff as Practioners. Feedback has been excellent, but with over 14,000 staff across the MSE, we need to grow this at pace. We want to expand our QSIR programme, but also support individuals to apply the skills they have learned so as to build a culture that empowers staff to undertake improvement as part of their everyday work.

What does your project aim to achieve?

Create an engaging & entertaining electronic learning package for staff outlining the basic concept of QI & promoting a common language & approach across the MSE. (6 months)
Institute regular QI clinics supported by coaches at each of the 3 MSE sites. (3 months)
Develop an online forum that enables staff who have undertaken a QI project to share their experience & seek advice (3 months).
Establish action learning sets for QI & redesign to link existing QI training programmes & projects, supporting patient pathway redesign. From these we will develop a network of multi-professional QI coaches & mentors (9 months).
Organise an annual event to celebrate the success of QI, bringing together QI graduates, coaches & mentors to share their learning & successes. (12 months)
Measurement of the success
–       Number of staff attending training
–       Number of QI projects registered
–       Evaluation of QI projects undertaken
–       Self-efficacy score of staff who attend QI training

How will the project be delivered?

We will undertake initial scoping work & stakeholder engagement to understand the current levels of understanding around QI across the MSE group. This will be analysed by theme and staff group & used to inform the design of the video/e-learning module.
We will contact the current 150 QSIR practitioners, asking them to inform us about what on-going support & networking opportunities they would find helpful. We will use this information to inform the design of future QI clinics, facilitation of Action Learning sets & other resources as indicated.
We will develop a competency framework to formalise the route to become an MSE improvement coach.
We will develop a formal process for the evaluation of the outputs of QI projects.
We will establish an MSE Improvement Celebration Day to bring together staff from across the MSE to share posters & presentations on their improvement journey.

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

This project is intended to be both a way to establish a culture supporting improvement & a way for staff across the MSE to share learning about their improvement journey at the three Trusts. We firstly want to utilise the video/elearning to set out the MSE improvement strategy to all of our staff, to signpost staff, and to begin to introduce our improvement language throughout the three organisations. We see this programme as an opportunity to challenge boundaries across organisations & to bring us together with a unified language and approach to improvement.
We would also take the opportunity to share our story across the Q community: the good, the bad and the ugly. Our reorganisation and the STP is duplicated across the country & we would like to learn with others going through this transition. This will be facilitated via Q, but we will also submit posters to national forums & utilise social media to publicise our progress.

How you can contribute

We are keen to learn from others who have been through organisational transitions and how they have utilised QI and Q to support unification. We feel that the Q exchange provides an opportunity for collaboration with other teams, trying to achieve similar aims, around building improvement capability across a wider organisation.
We are looking for critical friends to help us further develop our plans, learning from others experience who have tried to build the improvement culture in an organisation. We are also keen to receive suggestions around coaching and mentoring staff through QI and how these networks might be established.
Q also provides us with an opportunity for us to build a network of colleagues across the region and country.
Whilst it isn't part of the project, we aspire as part of our Q initiative to improve the Joy at Work of our staff, and therefore are keen to learn from some of these specific projects in the Q exchange.

Plan timeline

29 Nov 2019	QI clinical planning - rota venues & pack - 29/11/19
29 Nov 2019	Scope opportunities for sharing platform - 29/11/19
31 Dec 2019	Stakeholder engagement and scoping elearn/video
6 Jan 2020	Procurement process to select IT/media designer
30 Jan 2020	Launch QI Clinic - 30/01/2020
16 Feb 2020	Develop preferred option i.e. intranet/workplace
2 Mar 2020	Invite and launch sharing platform - 2/3/2020
30 Apr 2020	Launch of MSE video/elearn - 30/04/2020
24 Jul 2020	Coordinate Action Learning sessions and Launch - July 2020
30 Sep 2020	Celebration of MSE improvement September 2020

Comments

Ed Kingdon 21 Oct 2019

Hi Roon,

Really interesting project.

Look forward to seeing how the different elements of the STP are engaged in the project

Best of luck

BW

Ed
Rotimi Jaiyesimi 18 Oct 2019

A great initiative

With best wishes
Barbara Hercliffe 5 Oct 2019

Hi We are developing a similar approach to build a system wide QI Academy /faculty, using QSIR as our core QI methodology, you are further ahead in terms of having a trained cohort of practitioners. Our Exchange bid wasn't successful but was along similar lines so it will be great to connect and build a Q community around this topic. Looking forward to connecting.
1. Jenny Davis 7 Oct 2019
  
  Barbara
  
  Thanks for your comment - we are very keen to share learning, and to understand more about your improvement journey. Developing QSIR practitioners we have found very rewarding, it's a great programme but we still have so much more to do. We'd be very keen to learn from your experiences too.
  
  Obviously if we are successful we would be very happy to share our e-learning package to yourself and others interested.
  
  Best wishes
  
  Jenny
2. Aroon Lal 6 Oct 2019
  
  Hi Barbara
  
  Thanks for your comment. You aren't too far away from us and so it would be good to see how our Trusts might help each other.
  
  Good luck.
  
  Aroon
Aroon Lal 3 Oct 2019

Thanks for these comments. Working across an STP is certainly a challenge with the differing organisational cultures. The introductory package/video will be a key element in generating engagement and we'd welcome any help on content and style.

Other groups seem to have contemplated video packages, so we could look at creating core content that we could share within the Q-community and that could be adapted to other Trusts by adding a bespoke beginning and end: do others think this is possible?
Elizabeth Bradbury 1 Oct 2019

Sounds great....this is something we are all mulling over and it would be very helpful to keep the Q Community updated regardless of the award. I saw several similar proposals in the first round so there may be value in reaching out to them to share their experience or even creating a mini-Q Community around this. How will you sustain the programme after year1 ?
1. Aroon Lal 3 Oct 2019
  
  Thanks for the encouragement. Sustainability is, of course, key. The intention is to support those that have been through the training to either become part of the improvement faculty to help deliver future training and support clinics, or to become a point of contact for improvement advice within their own area as part of a network.
Andrea Gibbons 10 Jul 2019

Would love to understand more about your plans for training. Have you spoken to other trusts about the training that they are running as I'm sure there are many models that you could build on rather than reinvent your own? Good luck! Andrea
1. Jenny Davis 23 Jul 2019
  
  Hi Andrea,
  
  Our core training is the NHSI ACT QSIR programme. However, we have also started to look at how we do some bespoke training outside of this that supports wider staff groups. Absolutely agree on getting ideas from others though. Is there any thing that you have seen that you would recommend?
  
  Jen
Anna Burhouse 9 Jul 2019

Dear Aroon,

It’s great to see your idea here. There’s a huge appetite in this round of QExchange for cross STP or ICS QI capability building. Have you thought about reaching out to the other teams and making links? I can see a lot of mileage in collating and sharing learning about this important area.

best wishes and good luck

Anna
1. Jem Ramazanoglu 9 Jul 2019
  
  Hi Aroon,
  
  We have been doing some similar thinking in the North Central London STP QI group and have identified a gap in our current QI programmes. We are looking to co-design a programme that can be used to support PCN/ICS work. Please have a look at the Quality Coach Development Programme Bid for more info.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Jem