Two Surrey NHS teams win big at prestigious awards | News

Two of our teams have been recognised for utilising quality improvement techniques to go above and beyond to improve the patient experience.

Our staff have taken home two awards for two categories at the NHS Elect Patient Experience and Quality Improvement Awards.

They include a service that has enabled patients to receive IV antibiotics at home or in the community and another that has improved the way we care for older people living with frailty.

The Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy Team (OPAT) won the Patient Experience and Communications category.

Previously, patients who may have been otherwise fit and medically stable, needed an in-patient bed within the hospital to receive antibiotics through a drip directly into the blood.

Over the past year the team has worked with patients and their community nursing colleagues to develop a service that allows patients to receive Intravenous Antibiotics at home or in the community, freeing up beds in the hospital.

Dr Katherine McCullough, Consultant Physician, said “The team have worked so hard to make sure the care we provide to our patients is the best it can be, and so we are overjoyed to have won the Patient Experience and Communication award.”

The Acute Frailty Team won the Paul Thomas Perseverance Award. The team have developed a philosophy of continuous improvement in the last three years and major achievements include establishing a multidisciplinary frailty team in the emergency floor and a large Acute Frailty Unit.

There has been sustained and large reductions in length of stay for older people having to attend Hospital as a result.

Thanks to the teams hard work these improvements have reduced the amount of time older patients spend in hospital by 40,000 hours per year.

Dr James Adams, Director of Integrated Care for Older People, said “The team is delighted to have won the Paul Thomas Perseverance Award. We have worked incredibly hard to improve the pathways and care older people living with frailty receive and to shorten the amount of unnecessary time they spend in Hospital.

More than this, we have developed a great team spirit and we are champions for quality improvement being used to improve patient care and staff experience. We have never given up and we are always looking to adapt and improve, so it is nice to be acknowledged in this way by NHS Elect.”

Nick Sands, Director of Transformation, said: “It is great to see the hard work of our staff being recognised; quality improvement is at the heart of what we do and these two teams are prime examples of how adopting quality improvement techniques can help our teams work together to deliver sustainable improvements in patient care.”