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Addressing the 3 P’s in Corporate services during 2025

23rd January 2026

Written by Matthew Oultram (Improvement Advisor)

Our Corporate Directorate teams are running a number of projects aimed at improving value. A helpful framework to think about value is that of the 3Ps. People (better outcomes and experiences for patients, staff, and communities), Planet (reducing waste and environmental impact), and Pounds (cost reduction, cost avoidance). Together, the 3 Ps help QI projects deliver improvements that are clinically effective, financially responsible, and environmentally sustainable. Examples of how we are addressing each of the 3 P’s are below!

1. Planet

Gloves off!

The ‘Gloves off’ QI project led by Nichole and Melanie in Infection Control aims to significantly reduce the unnecessary use of gloves. The project is split into 2 parts:

Meal service, at John Howard Centre and City and Hackney
Clinical observations, Luton and Bedfordshire

The project’s first change idea includes infographics being placed on wards to encourage the reduction in amount of gloves being used, particularly when undertaking duties where glove use is not required, such as when serving food, taking routine blood pressure and temperature.

Our baseline data is below (Fig 1). Orders for gloves are placed infrequently and when needed, but as you can see from the data, this averages around 4000 gloves per order. Through our improvement efforts we are aiming to reduce this by 20% before July 2026.

Figure 1. Run chart – Number of gloves purchased

We are confident that this reduction will prevent large amounts of gloves unnecessarily ending up in landfill, thereby benefitting the planet.

2. People

Population Health

The Population Health team have been running a QI project aimed at increasing the number of work experience placements at ELFT for young people from across East London. This project drives our efforts work with local partners to support local people to employment.

Our theory of change is as follows:

Figure 2. Driver diagram

We tested the idea of a ‘career taster day’ for young people in two East London service areas. Following this, we ran a work experience week for around 30 young people from secondary schools in the local area.

Our results

We have significantly increased the number of young people doing undertaking work experience at ELFT (Fig 3). At the end of the work experience week, young people had the opportunity to provide their experience as to how they found it. We will use this feedback to continuously improve the experience for young people working at ELFT.

Figure 3. Number of young people undertaking work experience at ELFT – Quarterly

3. Pounds

Medical devices

There are many medical devices in use across the organisation, ranging from patient beds to blood pressure monitors. Devices require periodic testing to ensure they are safe and usable. Unfortunately, not all devices are presented for servicing when required. Non-presentation of devices results in additional call-out charges for engineers, and this can be around £300 a time.

Figure 4. Pareto chart. Items not presented for servicing

To address this the Medical Devices team are undertaking a QI project aimed at improving the numbers of medical devices presented for servicing when required. With such a large amount of devices we are starting our focus on where we can have the biggest impact (Fig. 4) – that of blood pressure monitors, and pulse oximeters. We are working with teams across the trust to test change ideas aimed at reducing this.

We look forward to developing these projects as they contribute to improving value across the Directorate, led by: