Improvement, Innovation and Effectiveness at DCHS
Our Improvement, Innovation and Effectiveness team support colleagues to help keep Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS FT an 'Outstanding' place to work and receive care.
What we do:
- Support all staff & teams (clinical & non-clinical) in DCHS with any improvement, innovation & effectiveness projects
- Enhance the development of our DCHS Quality Improvement culture
- Offer guidance to help to grow ideas
- Manage & offer training for AMaT (Audit Management & Tracking) system
How we can help:
- Help staff develop their ideas
- Assist with data collection & inputting
- Assist with analysis of project results
- Support in the implementation of mandatory audits to evidence compliance
- Advise on the development of surveys and questionnaires
- Offer expertise to enable you to get meaning from your results
- Support teams to identify improvements that lead to real benefits for patients and staff
Quality Improvement & Innovation
Quality improvement is about the people closest to the problem being able to think differently to explore creative ideas.
By giving you the permission, time, skills, network and resources, you need to pause, think, test out and make your ideas happen.
Our 8 Principles underpinning Quality Improvement @DCHS Key themes
- Staff Lead
- Permission
- The Heart of What We Do
- Easy
- Share
- No Red Tape
- Drop The Jargon
- Safe To Fail
Clinical Effectiveness is defined as:
“The application of the best knowledge, derived from research, clinical experience and patient preferences to achieve optimum outcomes of care for patients.” - Department of Health, 1996
When carried out in accordance with best practice, clinical effectiveness, improves the quality of care and patient outcomes. It provides assurance of compliance with clinical standards and identifies and minimises risk, waste and inefficiencies.
Our training offer
Our Learn@Lunch sessions are lunchtime webinars on a variety of topics around Quality Improvement. We currently have 2 sessions running twice a month until the end of 2024. These are:
-
15 seconds 30 minutes – We introduce the 15s30m social movement to you to help reduce frustration and increase joy in work
-
Questionnaire design – Thinking about sending out a questionnaire? Let us show you how to get the most valuable data out of your questionnaires.
View all dates on our Learn@Lunch calendar here. Email dchst.cet@nhs.net for the calendar invite or click on the join link directly from the calendar poster.
If you missed our previous sessions or would like a refresher, we have created bitesize videos of the sessions for you to watch.
Click on the titles below to view the videos
QSIR training is a free 8-module quality improvement programme that is delivered over 5 days* (usually, 1 session a week over 5 weeks) and open to all colleagues in all roles.
The modules that will be covered:
- Leading improvement
- Project management
- Measurement for improvement
- Sustainablity of improvement
- Engaging and understanding others
- Creativity in improvement
- Process mapping
- Demand and capacity
For more information on the QSIR training programme click here
Upcoming dates:
Spring 2025
•Day 1 Tuesday 25th February
•Day 2 Monday 3rd March
•Day 3 Thursday 20th March
•Day 4 Tuesday 25th March
•Day 5 Tuesday 1st April
To reserve your space, please email the IIET at dchst.cet@nhs.net
If you have a project or improvement idea in mind but feel like you need some support, contact us at dchst.cet@nhs.net giving us some details about your idea.
We will then meet with you to discuss your idea and guide you on your next steps.
Another good place to start is taking a look on our Audit Management and Tracking (AMaT) System. There are lots of DCHS Quality Improvement projects and clinical audits on there which could inspire you on where to start with yours. Or see if somebody has already had a similar idea!
Services often wish to use surveys (questionnaires) to seek the views of patients, service users and carers or families.
If you wish to conduct a questionnaire/survey of either staff or patients/service users, please complete the Questionnaire Panel Template and send it to the Improvement, Innovation & Effectiveness team.
All proposed surveys/questionnaires must be submitted to the Questionnaire Panel for approval prior to use.
All of the QI projects that have been shared with us are in our DCHS QI Work Book HERE.
Have you completed some QI work that you want to showcase in the flipbook? Complete one of the QI templates below and email it to dchst.cet@nhs.net
Donwload and complete a template with your QI work and send it to us at dchst.cet@nhs.net so that we can share and celebrate your work with you!
Got more ideas? Want to share? Join our QI Community!
Email dchst.cet@nhs.net to join now!
Click HERE to find out more about the QI Community.
I'd like more information on AMaT .....
Audit Management and Tracking (AMaT) is a software that helps us manage our clinical audit and service improvement projects.
The Improvement, Innovation and Effectiveness team (IIET) has overall responsibility for AMaT and will advise and support you to use AMaT wherever your audit journey may take you.
All DCHS staff can register to use AMaT. Click on the AMaT icon on your desktop or go to dchs.amat.co.uk.
If you're not already registered as a user you can click on 'Register Now'; remember to use your NHSMail email address for this. You will receive an email from AMaT prompting you to set up a password - please follow the instructions in the email.
There are lots of video tutorials on how to use AMaT in the AMaT Academy.
To access these, please log into AMaT and then click on the 'AMaT Academy' tab next to home.
If you need further support using AMaT, please contact us - dchst.cet@nhs.net
We manage our NICE Guidance through the AMaT platform to ensure we meet the relevant NICE standards.
If you have a responsibility for NICE in your area you should have received an email informing you that you have been added as the guidance lead for specific NICE guidance that has been published since January 2020. You will receive a notification from AMaT once you are required to complete a review to record your speciality and/or DCHS’ compliance with this guidance.
You can use the following handy guides to help you get to grips with managing NICE Guidance on AMaT:
All of our current audits are now being managed on AMaT (Audit Management and Tracking).
Mandatory clinical audits such as the Hand Hygiene audit or Effective Documentation Review can be found in the "Ward, Area and Service Audits" module.
Service level projects and national audits can be found in the "Clinical Audit & Improvement" module.
The We Care visit template is to be completed on the Audit Management and Tracking (AMaT) system.
For support with accessing your submission, take a look at our user guide.
For more information and resources to support your We Care visits, please go to our Quality Assurance webpage.
I'm interested in finding out more about clinical research at DCHS ...
NHS trusts are actively encouraged by Government to get involved with clinical research.
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is the nation's largest funder of health and care research and provides the people, facilities and technology that enables research to thrive. NIHR works in partnership with NHS trusts, universities, local government, other research funders, patients and the public, to deliver and enable world-class research that transforms people's lives, promotes economic growth and advances science.
Involving our patients in research
- Be Part of Research - information for our patients and their families or carers about clinical trials which might be beneficial to them. This site provides accessible information on studies that are running at the moment but also explains what it’s like to be in a trial.
- I want to help with research - this page contains information on involvement in research, what it might look like and also contains links to useful resources and places to find involvement opportunities.
Local research
DCHS is actively involved in research where appropriate and possible. We publish information about our research on the NIHR platform. This information has been published on a quarterly basis since January 2015. The criteria for submission is that the trial was approved within the previous twelve months and fell into one of the following criteria
- A clinical trial of an investigational medical product.
- Clinical investigation or other study of a medical device.
- Combined trial of an investigational medicinal product or an investigational medical device.
- Other clinical trial to study a novel intervention or RCT to compare interventions in clinical practice.
The information to be supplied is known as ‘Performance in Initiation’ or PII. In addition performance information is supplied about the ‘Performance in Delivering’ industry trial or PID and the number of participants recruited by DCHS.