Get involved: Quality Improvement

Carer Expert by Experience — Quality Improvement Falls Collaborative 2024

I was made to feel welcome and at ease during the collaborative session and enjoyed the content and opportunity to hear from the teams about what is working well and how they are planning their next steps.

Service User —  Expert by Experience

I participate in several of the workstreams because I care and want to make a difference in Mental Health.

Service User — Expert by Experience

The QI team has been very welcoming and has allowed me to find my place in the meetings in a comfortable way. It has been interesting to learn about the project and follow it through, seeing steady progress towards its aim.

11 of NSFT’s Community Mental Health Teams (CMHT) are working together on a Quality Improvement collaborative to introduce and enhance the trust-wide use of 3 tools designed to record and monitor how a person is progressing during their episode of care, identify if treatments are effective, and make changes using a person-centred approach.

The Adult Community Mental health Teams taking part in the collaborative are:

• Adult CMHT South Norfolk
• Adult CMHT West Norfolk
• Integrated Delivery Team Bury North (West Suffolk)
• Integrated Delivery Team Bury South (West Suffolk)
• Integrated Delivery Team Central (East Suffolk)
• Integrated Delivery Team Coastal (East Suffolk) 
• Adult CMHT Norwich City
• Adult CMHT Great Yarmouth and Waveney
• Integrated Delivery Team Ipswich (East Suffolk) 
• Adult CMHT North Norfolk
• Rehabilitation in Complex Psychosis North Norfolk

The tools the project teams are exploring and testing are:

SNOMED: A universal coding language used in our electronic patient record system to record and evidence the treatments and interventions carried out with our service users.

DIALOG+: A nationally mandated Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM) undertaken at regular intervals throughout treatment.

Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF): A Clinical Reported Outcome Measure (CROM) recorded at every appointment to enable clarity on service user progress during their episode of care.

As we look to improve the quality of our services, we want to invite people who have accessed one of these 11 Community Mental Health Teams or have supported a person to access one of these teams, to get involved in the collaborative. We want to hear about your experiences, ideas, and feedback to support our project teams to develop meaningful and sustainable changes to test and improve the outcomes and recovery of adults accessing community based Mental Health care and treatment.

If you would be interested in hearing more about the collaborative or how to get involved, you can contact the Quality Improvement team on QI.Team@nsft.nhs.uk 

Attend our Recovery College course to explore how you can use the Quality Improvement methodology, skills, knowledge, and tools in everyday life to support your recovery and personal growth journey. Learn how Quality Improvement is used in healthcare settings, how to be involved in Quality Improvement projects in NSFT and how using your lived and learned experience of receiving or supporting someone with treatment and services from NSFT can improve quality of care.

The course covers:

• What ‘quality’ means to you and what quality looks like in mental healthcare services.​
• Explore why Lived experience is important in Quality Improvement.​
• ​Introduction to the Quality Improvement approach used in mental healthcare​.
• Use a ‘real life’ example to understand;​ how to create SMART aims/goals, how to measure improvement​, how to create change ideas and test these.​
• Consider what the benefits and challenges might be for people with lived experience participating in Quality Improvement projects.​
• Explore what it is like to be involved in Quality Improvement projects and how you can join a project and/or support improvement work at NSFT.

Course Duration: 3 hours and 30 minutes including short breaks on Microsoft Teams

To find out more information or book your place follow this link Browse our Recovery College courses and begin your personal recovery journey | Norfolk and Suffolk NHS (nsft.nhs.uk)

Falls in older adults are serious and can impact an individual’s independence, day to day functionality, as well as their home and work life. The people that access one of our 8 Older People’s Inpatient wards across Norfolk and Suffolk experience organic conditions (such as dementia) and/or functional mental health conditions (such as depression and psychosis). With this variety and intensity of need across an older population comes an increased likelihood of falls. 

Our older people’s wards have been working as part of a QI collaborative to fully understand the reasons when and where falls are most likely to occur in their areas and come up with ideas that can be introduced to reduce the number of falls our service users are experiencing. This collaborative has been exploring the quality issue since the beginning of 2024 and the project plans to be running until the end of March 2025.

The older people’s wards which are taking part in the collaborative are: 

• Beach Ward
• Sandringham Ward
• Blickling Ward
• Rose Ward
• Willows Ward 
• Reed Ward
• Abbeygate Ward
• Laurel Ward

As we look to improve the quality of our services and environments to reduce and prevent falls, we want to invite people who have previously accessed one of our older people’s inpatient wards or have supported a person to access one of these wards, to get involved in the collaborative. We want to hear about your experiences, ideas, and feedback to support our project teams to develop meaningful and sustainable changes to test and subsequently reduce the number of falls that are experienced.

If you would be interested in hearing more about the collaborative or how to get involved, you can contact the Quality Improvement team on QI.Team@nsft.nhs.uk.