By James, expert by lived experience 

Optimising Flow in healthcare is often thought of in terms of improving processes to ensure our service users have the best experience possible throughout their care pathway. However, at the recent Optimising Flow QI programme, James, a service user who uses ELFT adult services described the impact of the challenges around the flow of his medication. James has lived experience of what it feels like to have delays in the prescribing or issuing of medication. He described that this can lead to unpleasant withdrawals and then when the medication is available can lead to unwanted side effects. He also noticed that communication between primary and secondary care is something that could be strengthened to improve the issue. James feels passionately about improving and is planning to work with the medical, nursing and pharmacy team to initiate a service user led quality improvement project around improving the flow of medications so that service users will receive the ‘right medication at the right time’. James intends to bring the work to the upcoming Improvement Leaders programme to develop his improvement skills to lead the work.

If you are a service user or have come across service users in your service who want to get involved in improvement, they can join the upcoming Intro to QI for service users and carers training on 15th September or join Pocket QI running throughout the year, which provides the foundational knowledge to get improvement going. Then, like James they may want to lead improvement work and join the Improvement Leaders Programme.