Quality Improvement within NELFT
Quality improvement within NELFT is lead and supported by two teams within NELFT. These are the Learning and Support team and the Strategic Projects team.
The two teams aim to provide the structure to enable NELFT staff and external NHS colleagues to achieve the following aims:
- to build improvement capacity;
- to ensure that staff have support and opportunity to utilise these skills;
- to ensure that improvement is sustainably embedded within the organisation;
- to aid in the scaling-up and spreading of quality improvement work across NELFT.
The Learning and Support team provides quality improvement training within the Trust, and uses the Model for Improvement methodology. The team promotes the ethos and advantages of quality improvement internally and externally and also offers guidance with all things QI and actively supports and work alongside staff to develop their improvement ideas using the QI methodology and associated supportive tools.
The key questions we ask ourselves in MFI are:
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• How will we know that a change is an improvement?
• What change can we make that will result in improvement?
“The Model for Improvement (MFI) provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes leading to improvement. The model provides an easily understandable scientific method which acts to moderate the impulse to take immediate action with the wisdom of careful study. As a consequence of its simplicity and widespread applications, it is the most commonly used QI approach in healthcare.” - Life QI
For guidance on this model please click here to view the relevant section on the IHI website.
Langley GL, Moen R, Nolan KM, Nolan TW, Norman CL, Provost LP. The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance (2nd edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers; 2009.
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Clare Linger
Clare qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in 2000. She has since worked across a variety of settings, both acute and community. Her role has involved working mostly with adults with neurological conditions; however she has also had roles within paediatric teams and worked with adults with learning disabilities. Prior to joining NELFT Quality Improvement Services. Clare was Clinical Lead for Adult Speech & Language Therapy across Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge.
Clare has always had an interest in improvement projects within the teams she has worked. In 2017 she completed the Quality Improvement Facilitator training and her passion for QI was born. She went on to complete the QI Mentor training and has since supported different teams with multiple projects across all areas of the Trust. Clare strongly believes that everyone has an idea for a change that can deliver an improvement; no matter how big or small. She loves that the improvement training gives people the tools to expand and support these ideas.
“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but about learning to dance in the rain !”– Vivian Green