QI is Power to Staff!

 30th November 2016

My name is Olusola, I work in Specialist Services at East London NHS Foundation Trust.

This is my QI story…

I have been through many organisational changes in my work career which has spanned over 26 years, so, I can safely say I have “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt”. I love looking at how to change what I do to make it excellent. But change is never easy, and, it always has an impact on people: uncertainties, new systems, restructuring, adverse feelings and the like.

So why did quality improvement stand out for me? Simply, having studied change management, I saw that this is the complete opposite of the traditional top-down change process. Wow! You can see why I jumped for it! It was love at first sight!

What has it done for me?

With QI, I was able to understand systems better and how to work together with colleagues to improve quality of work, standards and at the same time, improve experiences of both staff and patients. The question it answered for me was how you can determine the way you do your work better, smarter, time saving, cost cutting, making others happy and feeling fulfilled regardless of your status and position at work. That is what I gained in QI.

In my own words, I call it “power to staff”. Change ideas and implementation do not have to come from management to make it successful. Everyone in the organisation has equal opportunity to improve work quality and enjoy it. You can determine how to carry out your daily routine in a more efficient way and achieve greater success

Quality Improvement as practiced at ELFT affords you the opportunity to review and change your work process even though you are not the manager. It allows you test your ideas without fear of making mistakes. You gain from the knowledge of colleagues as you brainstorm and monitor improvement progress.

While completing my QI training, I worked on a project with clinicians in the Children’s Occupational Therapy Team, Newham, with aim to reduce waiting times to the service. While on this daunting project, we were able to reduce breaching of referral deadlines to zero. (See Figure 1) Patient and staff satisfaction looked great also as we monitored this during this project. Figures 2 shows that 91.67% of patients would recommend our service to family and friends. Figure 3 indicated staff satisfaction at different levels, taking into consideration that this was another new change process with which everyone was trying to adapt.

I am now working on different projects supporting the safeguarding team in Newham with aim to enhance safety of children in Newham.

QI is indeed a tool that gives power to staff to create an atmosphere at work for the mutual benefit of staff and patients. What a change! You own it and you feel it, you can commit to it joyfully.