Improving the Patient Experience
Improving the Patient Experience
This award highlights people innovating to improve our patients’ experience and services. This could be through: a quality improvement or digital transformation project; clinical research; learning from patient feedback. Here’s what their colleagues wrote about them in the nominations.
Anthony Gartland, Head of Mental Health Nursing
In the year that Anthony has been Head of Mental Health Nursing, he has made a huge impact in how our Trust manages patients suffering with their mental health.
Through his vision, expertise and dedication, he’s improved their experience with us while freeing up clinical colleagues to provide more timely care for patients with physical medical needs.
The number of patients attending our Emergency Department with mental health problems has increased tremendously during the last two years, causing many clinical and operational challenges across the Trust.
Anthony provides expert advice, training and support to staff caring for patients suffering with their mental health to make sure they get the right care. He makes difficult decisions and demonstrates critical thinking in relation to ethical and legal issues related to mental health care delivery.
He is developing an enhanced care team to manage mental health patients, which will improve the quality and standard of care while reducing agency spend on mental health nurses.
Georgina Blanco, Consultant in Emergency Medicine
Georgie has come to our Emergency Department and utterly transformed our processes. She is energetic, fun, enthusiastic and tireless in her approach to change management. She has played an instrumental role in reducing the time taken to assess ED patients by an average of 25 minutes.
She balances a clarity of vision with pragmatism and has a wonderful gift when it comes bringing people along with her. Georgie has a great manner with all staff groups and has the respect of not only her medical colleagues, but also the nurses, admin and healthcare assistant staff she works with.
She has worked closely with colleagues to create an efficient and patient-centred process around initial assessment/triage. She then implemented this with energy, verve and intelligence; constantly reviewing the feedback and adapting the process further.
Georgie helped reduce the time taken to assess patients from an average of 40 minutes to 15 minutes during her project – gains that have been sustained.
Lucy Kellaway, Lead Nurse for Supportive and Palliative Care
Lucy has launched a valuable service for bereaved relatives. She is exceptional at putting the needs of patients and carers at the heart of what she does every day.
Lucy recognised that there was no dedicated follow up for the loved ones of patients who have died. Due to her caring and compassionate nature, she took it upon herself to address this. She launched a telephone-based service to check in on bereaved people after they lose a loved one who was on end-of-life care.
The bereavement service is led by the Supportive and Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Specialists, who contact relatives approximately three months after the death of their loved one to check they are coping. Prior to the service starting, Lucy provided excellent training and a resource package to the team.
The service has received excellent feedback, and is only possible because of Lucy’s compassion, skill and resourcefulness.