Quality Improvement Services
About us
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.
Back to the list
Patrick Onyema
Patrick is a member of the Quality Improvement Services. He recently became a registered nursing associate and joined the team from the Urgent Community Response Team as an Advanced Quality Improvement Practitioner.
His QI journey started in 2017 after completing the facilitator training. Patrick then went on to finish his Mentorship training the following year. He was given the NELFT Quality Improvement award 2018 for his contributions to QI and he is very passionate about Dementia and a Dementia friend.
As a Support Worker where his journey began, Patrick felt the QI opportunity was just for certain NELFT bands but was amazed at the reception and support he got with his project on reducing the use of risperidone for people with Dementia in care homes. He also won an award for best poster in the 2018 Dementias Conference in London. His QI poster has also been accepted for presentation in June 2018 in Birmingham by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Patrick’s QI experience also gave him the opportunity to present his QI project at the Alzheimer’s Europe conference in Barcelona.
The QI team demonstrated that QI was truly for everyone, and he felt very special in their midst. He was pleased to see the change he was influencing from his position as a support worker and all it took was just one small change. He is now encouraging other support worker’s within NELFT to join in the QI revolution and journey to spear head the change they want to see.
“ Anyone who thinks they are too small to change the world, have not been in bed with a mosquito ” … unknown