News & Updates
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
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
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
Newham Perinatal team ‘Shaping their future’
11 June 2020
By Doranne McDonald and Marco Aurelio Improvement Advisors The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced different healthcare teams across ELFT to adapt and change the way they provide care to their services users overnight. The speed with which this challenge has been embraced has been awe-inspiring. However, as the country emerges from the first… Read More
Reflections on continuing a QI project during the Covid 19 pandemic
11 June 2020
By Chris Spanton, QI coach in the IAPT Directorate Our QI Journey… Our QI project was aimed at reducing the average waiting time for one of our services, Step 3 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), to 12 weeks, by November 2020. Driver diagram created by the project group John, the project lead, put together a wonderful,… Read More
Creating a Driver Diagram with people working remotely
10 June 2020
By Auz Chitewe, Associate Director. In this article, we share one way that a group of people, all connecting virtually from different locations, went about creating a Driver Diagram. A Driver Diagram is a core improvement tool that is useful for visually showing the theory of change for an improvement effort. It helps teams articulate… Read More
Shaping the Future of Services in SCYPS
10 June 2020
By Catherine Heaney, Improvement Advisor. The Specialist Children’s and Young People’s Services (SCYPS) held a Shaping our Future Workshop on 28th May 2020. The workshop was attended by over 100 people from the directorate, with representation from all services. Sarah Wilson, the Director of Specialist Services, welcomed people, describing the purpose as protected time for collective thinking about the future, knowing that we’re going to… Read More
Community Health Newham – Triple Aim Project Continues During Covid-19 Crisis
10 June 2020
By Susan Alfred, Improvement Advisor. In the midst of the challenging circumstances of COVID-19 it was good to hear that Community Health Newham’s Triple Aim project team had managed to keep going with the aid of technology. Where many projects had to take a pause so staff could concentrate fully on the crisis, this triple aim project team (whilst working on COVID-19 priorities themselves) managed not to miss a beat when they quickly reverted to bi-weekly virtual meetings. It has not been… Read More
How I have improved my garden and wellbeing during lockdown
8 June 2020
By Tim Gill, QI Programme Manager In recent years I’ve been trying to make the most of my garden, aiming for a pleasant place to relax and some extra benefits of home grown produce! This photo was taken in June 2018 and it seems I had some potatoes in progress and what looks like young courgette plants in the trough. … Read More
QI Department ‘ Virtual Pocket QI – Webinar Test’ Cycle 3
8 June 2020
With colleagues and service users spending more time at home during the lockdown, the QI Department decided to offer a ‘Virtual Pocket QI’ webinar every two weeks. People were given the option of staying for the full day or splitting the course across two days, which is how it was previously run in person. The theory was that this would suit those with stamina as well as those who would like time to digest different parts of the course and… Read More
From Face to Face to Virtual – Medical Education’s journey
3 June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an evolution in the way we deliver training across ELFT. The Medical Education Team are one of many teams that have faced this challenge and have worked rapidly to adapt using a quality improvement approach. The Problem Before the COVID-19 pandemic medical staff would have protected time to attend training sessions in person on Wednesday afternoons. However, with rules on… Read More
Lockdown Beginnings
29 May 2020
By Daisy Maradzika, Improvement Advisor Starting a new job always brings about mixed emotions, with a few sleepless hours and possibly a loss of appetite. However, we have all been there and have emerged unscathed, so I knew all would be well. The lock-down had been announced a few weeks before I was due to… Read More
