14 June 2017

The Trust which runs Shropshire’s two acute hospitals is developing a culture of safest and kindest care through its partnership with the Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) – the USA’s ‘Hospital of the Decade’.

An artist captures ideas surrounding the event from comments on social media.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is one of five hospital trusts in the UK taking part in an exciting partnership with VMI and last week it held a Regional Sharing Event to celebrate some of the significant improvements to patient care which have been made since this began.

Simon Wright, Chief Executive at SaTH, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford, said: “We have 1,700 patient episodes every single day so the opportunity to transform lives is here for us all to take. Through the work we are doing in partnership with VMI we are showing it is possible to improve the safety, experience and care that our patients receive.

Simon Wright, Chief Executive, welcomes delegates to the event.

“We have so far focused our improvement in four areas – Respiratory Discharge, Sepsis, Recruitment and Ophthalmology – and in less than two years we have seen 57,000 safer patient journeys and have taken thousands of miles out of the system, meaning our staff can spend more time with our patients rather than walking around our hospitals looking for equipment.

“This is not a programme of work and it is not a project. What we are doing at SaTH is introducing a new philosophy, a cultural transformation. We have a specialist team dedicated to the improvement work and as senior leaders we are spreading the message across our hospitals. We have already seen nearly 2,000 people exposed to the production system and we have 436 members of staff using the tools in their daily work.

“We are on a journey – it has taken VMI 14 years to get where they are and I think they would admit you never really finish the journey. We have made a lot of improvements in a short period of time. The future is very exciting and I really do believe we can achieve our vision of providing the safest and kindest care in the NHS.”

The KPO team from Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospital NHS Trust were at the event to hear about the work SaTH has been doing.

The Regional Sharing Event, held at the Shropshire Conference Centre at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on Friday 2 June 2017, was attended by numerous organisations and individuals from across the West Midlands and further afield, including Healthwatch Shropshire; Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin; and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Simon added: “It was great to have so many different organisations at the event as well as members of the public and our own staff. The work we are doing isn’t always conventional – we had one staff member saw a desk in half to create space for patients and other another team create new treatment rooms within a week for dignified care.

Staff are being supported on every step of SaTH’s journey; the Trust has regular Rapid Process Improvement Workshops (RPIWs) and more than 95 members of staff will have taken part on the Lean for Leaders course, which is based on the training that staff at VMI receive and is recognised as a major contributing factor to their reputation as one of the safest hospitals in the USA.

During an RPIW, a team of various staff members take a week out of their normal day job to investigate ways of making significant improvements in a specific area of work. Improvements made so far include:

  • Creation of a leaflet to ensure patients on Ward 9 PRH are informed of their discharge date within 15 minutes of arrival.
  • Conversion a blood trolley into a Sepsis trolley so everything needed to deliver life-saving medication (the Sepsis 6 bundle) is easily accessible and kept in one place.
  • Human Resource processes have been streamlined so it now takes far less time to approve adverts for job vacancies.
  • Ophthalmology Outpatient letters have been simplified following patient feedback.

Dr Nawaid Ahmad, a Respiratory Consultant at SaTH who took part in one of the very first RPIWs, said: “We all have the same common goal of wanting to deliver outstanding patient care, and by taking part and getting really involved in this new way of working I feel we are on our way to changing the system for the better.”

Clare Marsh, Ward Manager on Day Surgery at PRH, has already used the methodology learned on the Lean for Leaders course to improve patient care.

She said: “By taking a step away from the day-to-day, and observing the area we work in, we realised we were spending too much time walking around the ward looking for equipment. So what we did is place a tray containing all the common items needed for a patient in each of the lockers beside their beds. This might sound really simple but it has saved us eight hours of nursing time a week.

“We work in a complex environment but the Lean for Leaders course is teaching us to approach things in a different way and solve our own problems.”

Brian Newman, a Non-Executive Director at the Trust who has spent a career in Engineering Manufacturing and has been used to using Lean Methodology for many years, gave a short presentation at the Regional Sharing Event.

He said: “It has been fascinating to witness how lean techniques and a culture of continuous improvement, which UK industry has been familiar with for more than 20 years, has impacted SaTH.

“We are on a challenging and immensely exciting journey. A journey which will start to eliminate waste and non-value added activity for our patients. This will result in an empowered workforce giving a safe, efficient and caring service to our patients. This is the way we at SaTH are doing things from now on.”