Q Exchange
‘QI Cornwall’ – Collaborative quality improvement for our community
- Shortlisted idea
- 2024
Meet the team
Also:
- Kylie Lock (CFT)
- Jane Mitchelll (ICB)
- Gillian Dinnis (ICB)
- Sara Sanders (ICB)
- Gareth Walsh (Cornwall Council - PH)
- Eunan O'Neil (Cornwall Council)
- Louisa Forbes (Care Homes)
- Paul Abram (ICB)
- Wendy Holland-Moons (CFT)
- Zoe Greatex (RCHT)
- Gillian Carne (CFT)
- Helen Kitchen (CFT)
- Karen Lodge (Kernow Health CIC)
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?
QI Cornwall aims to embed structures that develop an improvement culture, increasing capability across our Cornwall Health & Care system, creating a united QI approach for Cornwall.
QI Cornwall has initiated harnessing existing QI professionals/enthusiasts comprising of acute, community & system partners – to date we have involved: Acute, Community, Public Health/Council, Voluntary sector, Social & our ICB; however, our ambition is to capitalise on expansion opportunities.
Feedback remains overwhelmingly positive with comments such as “This group is the first of its kind we have heard of”, “It’s invaluable us joining, sharing best practice and developing improvement across the system”.
Benefits:
- Opportunity to utilise efficient approaches to improving service quality, efficiency and morale for all in our Health & Care System.
- Upskill our staff to create conditions for improvement, ultimately delivering better patient care, workforce and community with improved outcomes.
- Collaborative working whilst providing shared ownership and developing a strong Improvement mindset.
What does your project aim to achieve?
Our central aim is to develop CIOS continuous improvement approach & deliver a robust improvement education framework underpinned by cultural & engagement actions that supports improvement activity. We aim to remove silos and create a ‘hive mind’ where we unify and deliver consistency for our patients benefits.
QI Cornwall approach combines:
- Developing/delivering systemwide QI training: incorporating a dosing approach to move introductory awareness through to generating greater improvement expertise.
- Communication Routes: utilising existing and new communication channels to share learning, improvement work and progress.
- Social Media: Showcasing and highlighting learning and challenges, inspiring, encouraging & motivating.
- QI Cornwall Website: A platform that allows shared contacts, resources, training options and improvement news (articles, publications, documents)
- QI Cornwall Digital Resource Pack: QI methodologies/tools with techniques, templates and support options.
The development of the project will be informed by the QI Cornwall Forum, which focuses on NHS Impact ambition and includes NHS England.
How will the project be delivered?
RCHT are in year 3 of a QI Culture & Engagement Programme delivered with established Programme methodology & governance structure. QI Cornwall will adopt a robust project management approach.
Month 1-4 – Communication, Branding & Presence:
- Commence active networking, communications and engagement, establishing QI Cornwall plans.
- Focus on developing QI Cornwall brand that is utilised and recognised across our system.
- Creation of a QI Cornwall strategy
Month 4-8 – Participation, Visibility & Engagement:
- Delivery of an Education Framework, utilising ‘train the trainer modelling’ across System workforce.
- Concurrent activities/events to drive improvement knowledge, culture for sustained engagement and expansion (events, workshops/roadshows & conference).
Month 8-10 – Sustain and Scale:
- Drive sustainment of improvement knowledge, skills and culture.
- Measuring qualitative and quantitive data from a range of sources including: networks, involvement, training delivered, and event attendance.
- Identify expansion opportunities to scale future development.
Month 10-12 – Reflective practice:
- Lessons learnt.
- Opportunities for integration of QI Cornwall project as substantive post.
How is your project going to share learning?
Our QI Cornwall forum group meets bi-monthly.
We have numerous established communication & engagement mechanisms that can be utilised: newsletters, e-bulletins, social media, QI Learn & Share events and annual conferences.
Sharing improvement endeavours hold as much learning and potential as a completed improvement. Through QI Cornwall, improvement work would be showcased, to promote a culture of continuous improvement.
We plan to promote and share learning, successes, and challenges through a range of platforms including: internal channels, QI Cornwall forums and events, conferences (which are open nationally), QI Learn & Share events (open systemwide), QCommunity, FutureNHS platforms and NHS England. It’s invaluable to share improvements and learn together to motivate and encourage others to make change in their areas. Our vision would be that through the development and embedment of QI Cornwall, we provoke ideas for others to adopt/adapt our approach to better health and care for their communities.
How you can contribute
- Do you already deliver improvement training across your system? Can you share your delivery plan with us?
- Do you have a capability strategy that you can share?
- Do you have any learning from developing QI capabilities in the community, voluntary sector, care homes, GP’s, Pharmacy services and Dentistry etc that you could share with us?
- Have you got any ideas of how to approach QI if you aren’t in a health care job role but work within the industry?
- How do you develop open communications and engagement with hard to reach staff groups?
- We want to learn from you and further share best practices so we can share back our learning, successes, challenges and next steps. We will share our approach, lessons/framework with others to fully support inclusion. We recognise that all systems will be different to ours, but we hope to support others to implement similar approaches.
Plan timeline
| 24 Jun 2024 | QI Cornwall Project set up: Project management/governance agreed |
|---|---|
| 15 Jul 2024 | Branding & Presence developing/deliver for QI Cornwall |
| 5 Aug 2024 | Networking & Communications commence for CIOS health & care system interest |
| 19 Aug 2024 | Develop of QI Cornwall resources |
| 14 Oct 2024 | Delivery of Education framework across the System parties |
| 28 Oct 2024 | Activities/events to drive knowledge/culture & engagement |
| 11 Nov 2024 | Delivery of Systemwide large scale events: Conference and roadshows. |
| 25 Nov 2024 | Further embedding of culture, knowledge & skills for Improvement |
| 6 Jan 2025 | Analysis data from 6 months of the project - make changes |
| 24 Mar 2025 | Investigate growth base, lessons learnt & successes/challenges to further sustain/scale |
| 21 Apr 2025 | Future opportunities and development of QI Cornwall work |
| 19 May 2025 | Review Implementation and embedment of QI Cornwall Practices |
Comments
Paul Anthony Gimson 24 May 2024
Hi there, we are on a similar journey here in Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB in South Wales. Irrespective of result I'd be happy to chat and share our experience.
Haydn Childs 3 Jun 2024
Hi Paul,
That would be great great thanks! Will reach out to you via email!
Thanks! Haydn
Lucy Cartwright 21 May 2024
Great submission, and really enjoyed your video!
Energising to see you advocating for a broad and inclusive approach to system working which includes people from beyond the traditional organisations. We're trying to adopt the same in our Coaching for System Improvement, United Neighbourhoods work.
I'd be interested in understanding the dimensions in which you'll be measuring impact, particularly as you're operating across a broad range of organisations and geography?
Haydn Childs 3 Jun 2024
Hi Lucy,
Thanks for your comment - your work sounds really interesting. It would be great if you would be interested in linking up for a chat sometime to discuss further? Measuring impact is always a challenging one! although, we have some more localised measures and ones that more reflect our larger strategic goals. Feel free to drop me an email and we can sort something out - haydn.childs@nhs.net
Haydn
Frances Mortimer 16 May 2024
Have you considered including environmental and social sustainability in your QI approach? We have consistently found that it increases staff engagement in QI as well as helping to shape QI projects with co-benefits to patients, staff and the environment. There are lots of open access resources to help at https://susqi.org or do contact us at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare.
Haydn Childs 3 Jun 2024
Thanks Frances - its definitely something we are trying to work on including and building into our approach with our different organisations Sustainability Leads. Thanks for the link too - I will explore further and may well be in touch!
John Wood 5 Mar 2024
A great initiative. A thread to be developed is a change management plan that addresses the human factors of aversion to change and leads to propagating a continuous improvement culture. To succeed this needs the active and visible support of the senior leadership team to get beyond "another initiative". Industry experience is that continuous improvement does not need to be complex, a team that spends 15 minutes every week to make small improvements that week are transformative over the years.
Robert Cowie (Patient Leader) 5 Mar 2024
An excellent project. I like the idea of breaking down "silos". Sharing of good practice and experience must be a good thing, e.g. in-patient experience across different wards/departments, or outpatient access to appointments or results (this is not consistent and joined up).
Zoe Greatrex 4 Mar 2024
Such an exciting initiative for Cornwall - breaking down organisational barriers to collaborate and expand QI capabilities across the county. This has the opportunity to make a big step in improving the quality of patient care across the system as a whole.
Gareth Walsh 3 Mar 2024
Having this initiative would be transformative, developing a system with a shared purpose to foster a training hub and community of best practice that would embed QI in all aspects of work and allow for easy sharing of knowledge and cross-fertilisation of ideas and learning.
Joanne Marie Smith 28 Feb 2024
This is such a fantastic collaborative, Cornwall would really benefit from this kind of initiative and help improve 'system led' thinking. To ensure the changes we make, have sustainable change, we need to embrace QI in all aspects of our work. There is already fantastic work being undertaken, but this would help bring it under one space, to share learning and resources and with the aim of getting better outcomes for all.
Heather Walker 27 Feb 2024
So much of the transformational change work we do in Cornwall reaches all areas of the NHS - it would be great to have a strong QI culture and capability across all the organisations to support these collaborative projects!
Nicola White 27 Feb 2024
A fantastic initiative for working together to make the difference in quality improvement across Cornwall!
Kenna Duston 27 Feb 2024
So many care pathways are delivered across different providers. Supporting system wide improvements will be great for our patients.
Karen Lodge 27 Feb 2024
This is a fantastic opportunity to work collaboratively and have a system approach to Quality Improvement.
Haydn Devereux-Childs 27 Feb 2024
Thanks Karen - we can only begin to imagine how valuable we could make the QI Cornwall work for the whole system and really support all of our different sectors/organisations to help tackle health inequalities and make health & care better for our Cornish communities.
Cristina Thiebaud 27 Feb 2024
"If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it". I believe everybody should have QI training, no matter your background or position. There is always a way to be better and excel. The QI team at RCHT does a great job training and promoting QI. This collaboration will benefit everybody in Cornwall in one way or another.
Haydn Devereux-Childs 27 Feb 2024
Thanks Cristina - we couldn't agree more! Brilliant quote too - we might have to 'pinch with pride'!
Mandy Gorton 27 Feb 2024
Anything that can improve our patient pathways across organisations through working together and speaking the same improvement language will be a good thing and benefit the people of Cornwall.
Kylie Lock 26 Feb 2024
QI Cornwall will enable us to adopt and spread further the brilliant pockets of QI work already happening across the Cornwall & IOS system. Creating a central point of access for teams or individuals to access specialist QI input, tools and resources will help up to build capacity in the system for further QI work. Exciting times ahead and cant wait to be part of the journey.
Stephen Griffin 26 Feb 2024
This kind of collaboration is an excellent way to build communities of good practise. It encourages a 'systems approach' that builds knowledge organically and collectively and multiplies our individual capabilities. I am looking forward to getting more involved by supporting and benefitting from its outputs.
Catherine Cade 26 Feb 2024
It's so important to work as a system these days as individual trusts cannot solve problems with pathways that cross organisations
Jane Mitchell 26 Feb 2024
I am fully supportive of this initiative for Cornwall as it builds on our integration with partners and also will help to demonstrate system wide quality improvements and hence improve the quality of our offer to our population.
Alisom Thorne-Henderson 26 Feb 2024
This would really support our culture of improvement
Evelyn Prodger 26 Feb 2024
Really love this concept and approach.
Worth having a look at SCFT and IC24 who have done lots of work in this area.
Haydn Devereux-Childs 26 Feb 2024
Thanks so much Evelyn! This is so helpful - definitely something we will look into to see what we can learn and adapt for our own approach!
Ella Stracey 26 Feb 2024
This is such an important initiative for Cornwall. The teams are already showing that collaboration makes a difference and if we can upscale our QI capabilities then we could do so much more! I love how inclusive it is and how it builds on what is already being done. Great submission!
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