What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

In the current health system and financial climate with every increasing waits and delays it is incumbent as a system to maximise all available resources to reduce waits. We have leveraged the support of all HSC all 5 Trusts and HSCQI Team to focus attention on how we can systematically and collectively utilise the skills of all staff trained in QI. Releasing capacity for improvement is a huge challenge especially with those at the frontline for all Trusts in Northern Ireland. Capacity represents the potential for improvement in all organisations but most of it is untapped. The only way to fully achieve the potential for QI is to create capacity with those who have the correct skills and knowledge across the system. To realise the full potential of improvement to reduce delays in care Trusts must be able to leverage capacity and build a strategy to enable staff to improve.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The aim of the project is at a system level to leverage capacity for improvement as a high performing health service and develop a collaborative continuous improvement culture. At a patient level it will reduce delays accessing services utilising capacity for improvement.

The objectives of the project include;

• Map the staff trained across the system, understanding how we can use their knowledge skills and experience to support improvement directly
• Align the capability and capacity of those staff with improvements to reduce waits on a regional basis
• Develop a validated tool for assessing improvement capacity in Healthcare organisations
• Design a standard strategy for building improvement capacity
• Create an infrastructure that supports capacity for improvement
• Develop system-wide learning for all healthcare organisation to be able to address the problem of wasted capability
• Free up trained staff to focus on improvement in reducing delays accessing health and care services across all Trusts.

How will the project be delivered?

The project will use an evidence based and adaptive approach. It will delivered in a number of phases;

• Phase one will be to map the staff trained across the system, understanding how we can use their knowledge skills and experience to support improvement directly. Undertake a system wide capacity assessment. This assessment will establish a baseline for capacity across all Trusts for improvement with those trained. By way of executing a deeper-dive some interviews with staff will be included. Qualitative thematic analysis of data collected from these sources will be conducted
• Phase two using a systematic approach from the evidence gathered will be to design a capacity building strategy which will be used as a construct for all Trusts
• Phase three will be to build a system-wide infrastructure to unlock capacity for staff to be able to drive improvement in reducing waits across the system.

How is your project going to share learning?

We will use the regional QUEST Programme developed by HSCQI as an opportunity to test this approach capturing all the learning. We will use an ethnographic approach to capture real-time experiences of these staff using video diaries, storytelling to capture their experience and ensuring the learning gathered from the project connects into organisational and regional strategies. The project will share the learning across the entire Health and Social Care system in NI and beyond. The methods used will include a regional learning event to showcase the learning. A full evaluation of the project will also be undertaken to examine the realised benefits and objectives achieved. The Tacit knowledge developed from the project will be used to stimulate further research into leveraging capacity for improvement with academic colleagues and will aim to produce published empirical evidence in this area of research.