What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

The emergence of COVID brought about the redeployment of available operational and clinical managers back to operational duty, allowing us to revisit how we  collaborate with our partners both internal and external to undergo daily operational and logistical activities.  It  became apparent that current systems and processes were antiquated and deeply imbedded, having organically evolved, resulting in pockets of silo management of both staff and operational and logistical processes.

A survey of involved personnel resulted in evidence to substantiate initial findings and realised a drive to collaborate in forming new and effective processes was needed.  Using QI methods and collaborating with all invested departments, the team began to review all operational processes while managing daily activity.  Some positive changes were realised immediately creating more effective partnership working and efficient processes.  Others improvements are ongoing and require alterations to realise the desired change, these are managed within the operational support cell.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The project aims to eradicate waste, creating a lean approach to operational process, in turn bringing together multiple divisions of the Trust to create an aligned workforce working towards a joint goal.

Data collated in a short period of time concluded that the antiquated processes created a mass of ineffective unrequired workload and lost time, with little ownership of activity relating to specific departments.  Through working in collaboration with internal partners we have enabled changes to reflect required outcomes and reduce the duplication of work often found in silo working.

A number of service improvement projects have evolved from the support cell, which given the opportunity could provide significant financial and service delivery improvements to the Trust as a whole.  With a view to expand the supports cell’s capacity to develop service improvement through further and closer collaboration with our external partners creating a system wide approach to operational challenge

How will the project be delivered?

The project is being delivered by utilising a small number of existing operational staff seconded into the support cell, these staff have a wide range of management and operational experience and who desire to see and effect change and service improvement will be responsible for the daily activities of the support cell in its ongoing operational capacity in ensuring we can maximise our service delivery, whilst identifying and supporting new and existing improvement projects.

The buy in from key stakeholders within the trust has allowed the support cell to merge previously isolated tasks and centralise them to a single individual. The collaborative working and sponsorship from our stakeholders coupled and the new simplified and streamlined process have brought greater focus and availability for staff support

How is your project going to share learning?

Learning can be shared through the ambulance sector (UK wide) and also throughout healthcare. This learning may arise from small scale changes made to processes and systems however the general concept may be able to be packaged ready for service adoption.