Tag Archives: quality improvement

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HEI Challenge for Patient Supported Quality Improvement and Education in Healthcare PPI conference

The Higher Education Institution (HEI) Challenge for Patient Supported Quality Improvement and Education in Healthcare held its Patient and Public Involvement Working Group Conference at Loughborough University on 1st October 2015. This collaborative event formed a central part of the HEI Challenge. Led by the Patient and Public Involvement working group, the overall aim of the event was to provide a forum to focus and share achievements and help identify how Universities can support developments for the future; locally, regionally and more widely.

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RachelHawleyposterWho Attended? Just over fifty people attended the event, bringing together both staff and service user perspectives. Participating universities were represented by staff, service user and learner voices. People travelled from across the region from a range of voluntary and service user led organisation including; Healthwatch Nottinghamshire, British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health, Leicester – Loughborough Biomedical Research Unit, CLASH – MSK, Alzheimer’s Action Alliance, Diabetes UK, and the Carers Federation.

HThe HEI Challenge Award 2014-15, from the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network, is a unique opportunity for East Midlands Universities to foster a sustainable approach to working collaboratively for the benefit of our population and to drive positive experiences and outcomes for learners and local employers. The ultimate goal of the HEI Challenge is to collaboration to share, develop, showcase and spread work across East Midlands and surrounding Universities around the unifying topic of healthcare quality improvement.

Loughborough5Overview and highlights of the day: Conference delegates were welcomed to the event by Kristen Clements. Together Kris and Rhian Last co lead the PPI working group. The day began with a two presentations on that addressed the HEI challenge for patient supported quality improvement and education in healthcare. Rachel Hawley, Project Manager began by providing an overview of the Challenge to set the context for the day. Professor Niro Siriwardena showcased examples of patient supported quality improvement.. Participants engaged in group discussions to explore what patient supported quality improvement means to them and their organisation, each working group capturing its essence in ways that will inform future guiding principles for practice.

102915_1047_HEIChalleng1.pngThe Street Activity: The lunch time period was filled with conversations and emerging collaborations. Ten service user led / voluntary sector organisations gathered in ‘The Street’ to participate in activities aimed at stimulating conversations, hopefully leading to new collaborative projects. Participants were invited to submit project ideas to be awarded funding – further information about these projects will be shared soon. Participants engaged in a range of activities along the way; from stepper machines, to Bollywood dancing.

The afternoon began by moving into workshops activities on the following themes:

  • Loughborough3Involvement and Inclusion in action: Shahnaz Aziz, EM-AHSN; Theo Stickley, University of Nottingham and and Julie Gosling, Making Waves
  • Bridging the gap for involvement in research, education and practice: Andrew Grundy, Nottingham University and Elizabeth Rye SUCRAN
  • To train or not to train? The development for involvement: Paula Wray CLAHRC
  • Assessment of impact – The value of patient stories: Rachel White – NHS England

Keynote Showcase: Transformational change and social innovation

Loughborough4The final session showcased staff and service users coming together to share their experiences through two presentations; Phil Smith, Kidney patient champion, Emma Watson, Kidney patient centre representative along with SCAD team members, Rebecca Pritchard and Catherine Beck. Experiences were shared that clearly showed the benefits of patient supported quality improvement in action; for staff, for service users and for the organisation.

A participant said: “That was a fantastic event. I thought the blend of academic input and service user experience was just right. Some of these events are valuable but exhausting. This time I found it valuable and energizing – and much more determined to push harder“.

[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2015/10/PPI-Event-Report_FINAL-.pdf” responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

For further information or to get involved you can:

  • If you are interested in finding out more about the HEI Challenge contact Rachel Hawley, Project Manager – rhawley@lincoln.ac.uk 07711 532512
  • If you are interested in finding out more about the Patient and Public Involvement working group you can contact either Kristen Clements (K.M.Clements@lboro.ac.uk) or Rhian Last (R.Last@educationforhealth.org)

– We hope that you will help us continue the conversations:

Please follow us on Twitter: @qi_learning

Rachel Hawley

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CaHRU’s REST project features in Health Foundation’s stories of outstanding impact in primary care

REST-ABOUT1The Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) project featured in the Health Foundation’s recent newsletter, ‘Stories of outstanding impact in primary care‘. The REST project is an ongoing area of research within the Quality and Outcomes in Primary Healthcare group at CaHRU led by Prof Niro Siriwardena and involving other members of the team including Fiona Togher, Viet-Hai Phung, Dr Coral Sirdifield, Dr Jo Middlemass and Dr Zowie Davy. The project was initially funded by the Health Foundation under their Engaging with Quality in Primary Care scheme to improve primary care for people with insomnia. Subsequent work has been funded by the Research Investment Fund at the University of Lincoln, the EPSRC and the East Midlands Health Innovation and Educational Cluster.

restlogoThe research seeks to improve treatment for people suffering with sleep problems by promoting a range of treatment options beyond just sleeping tablets and has led to a series of peer-reviewed and highly cited publications in journals such as the British Journal of General Practice, Health Expectations, Sleep, Biomed Central Family Practice, and the British Medical Journal. Subsequent research has also been undertaken in collaboration with other institutions including Universities of Glasgow, Connecticut and Ghent and also Harvard and Oxford Universities.2. E-learning - HOME - Rollover

The project led to its own REST project website (http://restproject.org.uk/) in 2011 and a REST e-learning programme for primary care professionals on how to manage insomnia using non-drug therapy which has been accessed almost 12,000 times by 10,000 users in over 150 countries with over 5,000 users in the UK alone. REST was showcased as one of three impact case studies submitted from CaHRU to REF2014.

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CaHRU presents at European Forum for Primary Care Conference in Amsterdam

EFPC-logo-4-k new versionMembers of CaHRU, Dr Coral Sirdifield, Ana Godoy and Prof Niro Siriwardena attended the annual conference of the European Forum for Primary Care (EFPC), ‘Integrated primary care: research, policy and practice’, at the Tobacco Museum in Amsterdam from 30 August to 1 September 2015 to meet with colleagues and present an invited workshop on patient experience at the meeting. Niro Siriwardena is a member of the advisory board of the EFPC and attended a board meeting on the day before the conference.

Coral Ana Niro3The workshop, entitled ‘QUALICOPC in the UK, the patient perspective, took place on the first afternoon of the conference and was informed by work from CaHRU on the EU funded Quality and Costs of Primary Care in Europe (QUALICOPC) study. The session was well attended, enabling participants to discuss different approaches for measuring patient satisfaction with primary care and how satisfaction could be improved. Coral and Ana presented an innovative approach called Importance-Performance Analysis, using the QUALICOPC data from England, to demonstrate how the technique could help practitioners, researchers and policy makers to identify where one most needed to focus to improve patient satisfaction.

riverboatThe conference included excellent keynotes from Prof Chris van Weel, Emeritus Professor of General Practice at Nijmegen (‘The history of Dutch General Practice or: how Primary Care saved the nation’), Dr Isabel Moulon from the European Medicine Agency (‘Bridging the gap between medicine development and clinical practice: is primary care out of the picture?’), Ellen Nolte from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (‘Integrating care: what we know and what we do not know’), Prof John Øvretveit of the Karolinska Institute (‘Priorities for actionable research to speed and spread improvements in caring for chronic illnesses’), Dr Tonka Poplas Susič and Metka Žitnik Šircelj (‘Model practices in family medicine in Slovenia’) and a closing summary from Prof Marc Bruijnzeels of the Jan van Es Institute (‘Challenges for the future of integrated primary care’). A range of parallel research, debate and workshop sessions, lunch on a riverboat and an excellent conference dinner provided a full, interesting and enjoyable programme for delegates.

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East Midlands Universities Association (EMUA) Student Conference 2015: Impact & Collaboration

fionaOn Thursday 3rd September 2015 I was fortunate enough to attend the EMUA Student Conference hosted by The Graduate School at the University of Lincoln. The annual conference provides an excellent opportunity for postgraduate students across the region to network and present their research to their peers in a supportive, inquisitive and encouraging environment.

There was representation from the Universities of Lincoln, Loughborough, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and De Montfort University, Leicester. The multi-disciplinary nature of the conference meant that students were able to learn about research that could be similar to their own work in terms of subject but also could be completely different in topic and methodology.

The morning began with a fascinating key note from Dr Helen Zulch from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln. Dr Zulch talked about ‘scholarship and the many faces of impact’ and drew upon her own research expertise in veterinary behavioural medicine as an example of how academic research can impact on both society and individuals. One of the key messages of the presentation was that ‘whatever our motivation, the knowledge and experience that we gain through our research has the potential to impact on others’. Dr Zulch highlighted the fact that even if our research legacy is simply that we instilled an interest and motivation in others to pursue a research career then this is something to be proud of.

IMAG0510Throughout the day there were parallel sessions of oral presentations given by the student delegates. I attended some really interesting talks around subjects as diverse as ‘The gay tree of life: an interdisciplinary approach to homosexuality research’ to ‘Stakeholder perspectives of collaborative working and street works management’. I gave a presentation entitled: ‘Engaging with patients and NHS staff to develop a Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) for use in NHS ambulance services’. The theme of the conference ‘impact and collaboration’ enabled me to concentrate on an element of the research process that I hadn’t previously considered in much detail. The opportunity to focus in on this within my presentation will be beneficial during those crucial thesis writing days!

The conference concluded with four finalists (at university level) of the three minute thesis competition presenting to the whole delegation. The aim of the competition is for students to effectively explain their research in ‘language appropriate to a non-specialist audience’. It draws upon their communication skills and ability to ‘cut to the chase’. The presentations were outstanding and the way in which the students drew the audience in with their engagement skills was fantastic.

Overall, I came away from the conference having made several new contacts, gained renewed confidence in my work and an optimistic view of PhD life in the East Midlands. The Graduate School here at the University of Lincoln did a great job of organising the day and ensuring that everything ran smoothly so thank you graduate school! I look forward to next year’s conference…

Fiona Togher

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Rachel Hawley joins the Community and Health Research Unit

Rachel Hawley has recently joined the Community and Health Research Unit. Rachel was previously based at Sheffield Hallam University. She has 25 years’ experience of working with a wide range of public sector organisations at local, regional and national and European levels where patient, public and learner engagement have extensively Rachelunderpinned her experience. Holding a Master’s degree in Coaching and Mentoring from Sheffield Business School she is currently working towards my Doctorate in Professional Studies.

As researcher, coach, lecturer and author with teaching experience in the fields of healthcare leadership and management she has experience of managing high profile national projects, skilled in providing expert consultancy, leading organisational and cultural change in complex organisations with a proven track record of working through ambiguity to develop and translate national policy into local goals and practice. Her personal and organisational approach is underpinned by collaborative style, working with people to simplify the complex and find innovative and practical solutions to change for service improvement.

The HEI Challenge Award 2014-15, funded by the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network, is led by the University of Lincoln. It provides a unique opportunity for East Midlands universities (and other universities  commissioned to deliver education by Health Education East Midlands), providing education and training of health professionals in the region, to foster a sustainable approach to working collaboratively across the region’s HEIs for the benefit of the population and to drive positive experiences and outcomes for learners and local employers.