Royal Surrey teams shortlisted for prestigious Patient Safety Awards | News

After two of the toughest years faced by healthcare staff, three teams at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust have been shortlisted in six different categories for the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Patient Safety Awards 2022.

The successful teams include the Radiotherapy Department, the SCReaM Team who run the Human Factors and Team Resource Management Programme, and the Maternity Services Team. A collaboration between the SCReaM Team and Maternity Services has also been shortlisted for the Maternity and Midwifery Initiative of the Year category.

The Radiotherapy Department’s launch of daily online adaptive radiotherapy has been shortlisted for the Digital System and Process Development category, recognising the team’s outstanding contribution to healthcare. 

Judges selected the team, which is comprised of doctors, radiographers and physicists, based on their ambition, visionary spirit and the demonstrable positive impact that their project has had on patient and staff experiences. 

The team’s CT-based online adaptive radiotherapy benefits cancer patients by using artificial intelligence to deliver personalised treatments that respond to daily changes in a patient’s anatomy. It particularly benefits patients with pelvic cancers by reducing the potential side effects of radiotherapy on surrounding organs, such as bladder and bowel. 

Royal Surrey is one of only two NHS Trusts to have implemented this technology and the multi-disciplinary team has delivered 600 of the treatments to date for patients with bladder or cervical cancer. 

Liz Adams, Head of Radiotherapy Physics, said: “We are delighted to have been shortlisted for this award, as it highlights the dedication and collaborative working of the multi-professional team in successfully implementing daily online adaptive radiotherapy.

“We are committed to improving outcomes for our patients, and are very proud to be able to offer this cutting-edge treatment.  To have been chosen among such strong competition is a wonderful achievement, giving a tremendous boost to the Radiotherapy Team in their efforts to improve the technique further and make it more widely available.”

The second successful team is the SCReaM Team, which has been shortlisted in five categories including the Changing Culture Award, the Harnessing a Human Factors Approach to Improve Patient Safety, Patient Safety Education and Training Award and Patient Safety Team of the Year. The team also worked on the TEACUP project in collaboration with Maternity Services to enter the Maternity and Midwifery Initiative of the Year category.

The SCReaM Human Factors (HF) and Team Resource Management is a programme developed to improve patient and staff safety and wellbeing through raising the awareness, understanding and application of HF. The team’s programme, which is structured around three key elements: Training, HF projects and HF Engineering, encapsulates crew resource management (CRM) principles, QI methodology, and HF methodology to enable staff to design their system to best fit their ways of working and improve patient safety.

Working with Maternity Services, the SCReaM Team’s TEACUP project looked at effective communication and collaboration within multi-disciplinary teams to ensure staff could escalate concerns to provide the best possible maternity care for the Trust’s patients.

Suzi Lomax, consultant anaesthetist and programme lead, Jenny Sutcliffe, Human Factors Specialist, and Jennifer Macallan, SCReaM fellow, said: “We are delighted to receive national recognition through being shortlisted for five diverse HSJ awards. This demonstrates the pioneering HF work we’re undertaking and makes Royal Surrey a leading Trust in this arena. It’s indicative of the huge advances of the HF landscape in healthcare and the innovative work undertaken by our passionate team.”

The Maternity Services Team are the third successful team to be shortlisted for their patient-led service development – Hearing the True Voice of Women project. The team’s entry for the Maternity and Midwifery Initiative of the Year looked at the department’s feedback methodologies and their limitations in fairly representing all women. To tackle the issue, the team adopted the use of a patient experience platform to support a transformation within the service.  

Clare Cardu, Deputy Head of Midwifery and Transformation Lead Midwife for Women and Children, said: “I am thrilled that we have been shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards. The last year has seen considerable transformation within our Maternity Service and the patient experience platform technology has become a rich resource for understanding the lived experience of the women and families who use our service. We are proud to have been able to utilise this feedback across our service to inform many quality improvement projects that enhance maternity care for women.”

Louise Stead, the Trust’s Chief Executive, said: “Congratulations to all those involved in the shortlisted projects. Patient safety is our ultimate priority and at the heart of everything we do, so it is fantastic to see these innovative projects recognised by the HSJ Awards judges. I’m immensely proud of the dedication and commitment of our forward-thinking staff who continually strive to improve and develop our services to achieve one of our True North objectives of zero patient harm.”

Winners of the HSJ Patient Safety Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony on 15 September.