News & Updates
Reconnecting with Service User QI Coaches and the Community QI Forum in Luton and Bedfordshire post Covid-19: Voices of our Service User and Carer QI Coaches
15 September 2020
By Satwinder Kaur (QI Coach and Service User), Craig Donohoe (QI Coach, Service User and Carer) and Daisy Maradzika (Improvement Advisor) Why is Quality Improvement and the Community QI Forum important post Covid-19? Satwinder Kaur (QI Coach and Service User) As a QI coach with in-depth knowledge of involvement in projects and as a practising… Read More
Leveraging Microsoft PowerBI to bring our departmental data to life
15 September 2020
By Akkash Purani, Senior Improvement Data Analyst. The QI department have changed their yearly objectives (April-March) to 90-day objectives, allowing them to be more reactive and flexible during the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach is to strengthen data collection and analysis so that the team can understand and analyse their work during the initial stages of… Read More
Learning Disabilities Psychological Therapies making sense together: What changed during COVID-19?
15 September 2020
By Doranne McDonald and Carlos Santos, Improvement Advisors On 14 July, 2020, members of the Learning Disabilities (LD) Psychological Therapies team from Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, and Bedfordshire & Luton, came together to reflect on their experiences during COVID 19, and the changes their service have had to make as a result. The participants included:… Read More
ELFT’s virtual Quality Improvement (QI) Collaborative with London Healthy Partnership (HLP) Continues Efforts To Reduce HIV Infections in London by 2030
2 September 2020
By Marco Aurelio, Improvement Advisor In the latest of our series of updates around ELFT’s support of a QI Collaborative, hear about how some of the organisations involved are getting on with their projects Since the beginning of 2020, twelve organisations have come together five times, as part of a Quality Improvement Collaborative. Two of these sessions were held face-to-face, and three virtually, as a result of COVID-19. The most recent events were held on 1 July and 14 August respectively. The aim of these sessions was to understand how the QI projects were progressing; to share learning; and for the organisations… Read More
SHAPING OUR FUTURE: Bedfordshire Inpatient Mental Health achievements under the pressure during Covid-19
25 August 2020
By Sher Kayani, Improvement Advisor The onset of the pandemic and lockdown has undoubtedly had a tremendous impact on the inpatient mental health services. The inpatient teams have been responding to the needs of covid-19 by making multiple adaptations and innovations in the way they deliver their care. Some of these changes include reconfiguration of… Read More
City and Hackney: Nurturing the roots of change using projects and daily improvement tools during the pandemic
20 August 2020
By Francisco Frasquilho, Senior Improvement Advisor The pandemic crisis has led to urgent and rapid changes to healthcare. How does Quality Improvement fit in with an ever changing environment, especially during an era of unprecedented stress on an already burdened system? What does QI look like in the time of the pandemic, and how can… Read More
Newham Community Group Programme Shaping Their Future
20 August 2020
By Doranne McDonald, Improvement Advisor Members of the Community Group Programme team in Newham (a complement of occupational therapists, occupational therapy technicians, psychologists, a sports psychologist, social worker and service users), recently participated in two different workshops, on 24 June, and 8 July, 2020, respectively, to reflect on their experiences, and the changes the service… Read More
Community Health Newham Service Users & Carers Lead the Way
20 August 2020
By Susan Alfred, Improvement Advisor Congratulations to the Community Health Newham (CHN) directorate for delivering two firsts in their directorate on Tuesday 21st July 2020. With a mixed team of enthusiastic service users, carers and staff the directorate saw – Their first service user/carer inspired and led project officially started and Their first project launch… Read More
A Quality Improvement Approach to DNAnudge/COVID-19 Point-of-Care Testing in Mental Health
14 August 2020
By Jamie Stafford, Senior Improvement Advisor In recent months, a team of staff in Tower Hamlets have begun using Quality Improvement to try and improve Point-of-Care COVID-19 testing, in order to reduce the amount of time service users are required to spend in isolation, thereby improving service user and staff experience. In order to structure… Read More
‘Shaping our Future’ Workshop in Newham Psychological Therapies’ Service
14 August 2020
On the 21st of July over 30 service users and staff from Newham Psychological Therapies (PTS) team came together to spend time reflecting on experiences of COVID-19 and to think how this could affect future services going forward. The session was co-designed with the members of the team and facilitated by colleagues from People Participation,… Read More
Newham Older Adults Shaping Their Future
13 August 2020
By Sian Bowl, Newham Performance Lead Recently, members of the Older Adults Community team in Newham, came together to spend some time reflecting on the changes the service has made in response to COVID-19, and to think about the way the service could look in the future, facilitated by colleagues from the QI, Performance, and… Read More
QI Essentials: More than a set of tools…
11 August 2020
There’s no doubt that quality improvement employs a large set of tools – driver diagrams, statistical process control charts, Pareto charts, force field diagrams, cause and effect diagrams, PDSA cycles, affinity diagrams, flow charts… The list could go on and on. Indeed, one of the comforts that quality improvement brings is the chance to build… Read More
My Experience Of Being Virtually Recruited During Lockdown
7 August 2020
By Samina Aklas,Trainee Data Analyst, Quality Improvement Team It is always an exciting, but nerve-racking experience when starting a new job. Adapting to an unfamiliar environment, and meeting new colleagues is hard. It’s even harder during a global pandemic, where there have been unprecedented changes in many areas. I strongly believe that things happen for a reason. As it was still lockdown, I went through the whole recruitment process at… Read More
Tech Champions – Supporting the Quality Improvement Department with New and Existing Technology
5 August 2020
Figure 1. Tech Champions in the Quality Improvement Department testing new and innovative ways of doing things.In early 2020 not everybody in the Quality Improvement Department was up to speed with the latest software and technology that was available to us. This was exacerbated when the Covid-19 lockdown began, and we needed to find new… Read More
Using Improvement Tools
10 July 2020
“Forensics newsflash! With so much change over the past few months, the Forensics directorate have really had to their utilise improvement tools. They have mapped out the causes and effects of racial inequality using a ‘fishbone diagram’. A ‘sketchnote’ has been drawn to communicate a new quality improvement project. A plan to mitigate the impact of Covid19 has been laid out using… Read More
Shaping the Future of ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ in Bedfordshire
8 July 2020
By Michael Mcghee, Carlos Santos, Susan Alfred, Carole Green, Gopal Waddon and Amrus Ali The Bedfordshire Community Health Services (BCHS) held a ‘Shaping Our Future’ Workshop on 10th June 2020, gathering fascinating insights about the next steps for their ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ in both Luton & Dunstable (L&D) and Bedford hospitals. The workshop was attended… Read More
Quality Department ‘Virtual Away Day’
29 June 2020
A personal reflection by Katherine Brittin, Associate Director of Quality Improvement. The Quality Department hosted their first ‘proper’ virtual ‘away day’ on 26 June. What I mean by ‘proper’, is that it was designed with intent to utilise the technology we now have available to the best we could and develop content to reflect our… Read More
Exciting changes coming to Life QI
15 June 2020
A major Life QI update is on the way towards the end of June 2020. The update brings with it new features as well as revamps to existing ones. Three things that immediately caught our eye are the changes to the driver diagram, optimised SPC charting functionality and a whole new whiteboard feature. Driver Diagram Driver diagrams are also being revamped. They will be more responsive and… Read More
ELFT provides second virtual training and coaching session for ‘Fast Track Cities’ Quality Improvement Collaborative to reach ‘zero’ HIV infections by 2030
11 June 2020
By Doranne McDonald and Marco Aurelio, Improvement Advisors ELFT, in collaboration with Healthy London Partnership (HLP), is supporting a quality improvement collaborative of 12 projects from voluntary and healthcare organisations across London, seeking to reduce HIV infections to ‘zero’ by 2030. Organisations part of the collaborative include: In April, 2020, the first virtual coaching session… Read More
Streamlining Internal Communication within the QI Department using MS Teams
11 June 2020
As many of us have moved to remote working, we’ve had to grapple with how we stay connected with one another when we can’t just turn around and have a conversation. For some that’s meant more emails, alongside using new tech such as Microsoft teams to have instant chats. However, in the QI Department we’ve… Read More
