Colleagues from our Brighton, Haywards Health, St Richard’s, Southlands and Worthing hospitals attended graduation events this month after completing their Patient First Improvement System (PFIS) training.
The teams, who started their training last summer, shared the improvements they have already made to benefit staff and patients, and received PFIS certificates from members of the Executive team in recognition of their brilliant work.
PFIS, which is delivered by our Kaizen team, is designed to give frontline colleagues the freedom to identify opportunities for positive, sustainable change and the skills and support they need to make it happen.
The graduates included staff from the following teams:
- Ophthalmology in Southlands
- Discharge Lounges and discharge co-ordinators across all sites
- Booking department in Worthing
- Referral Hubs
- Vascular Ward – Level 8 tower, Royal Sussex County Hospital
- Royal Alex Children’s Hospital (RACH), Level 9 Medical Ward
- Clinical Site Management across all sites
Allyson Prince-Ettiene, Discharge Lounge Coordinator at Princess Royal Hospital, shared the changes her team had made: “We introduced status sheets which allowed us to make sure the discharge lounge ran smoothly throughout the day – previously we just had a general handover. Through an improvement ticket, we also identified we were ordering too many sandwiches. Now we just order for the day, minimising waste.
“The PFIS training showed us the things we could improve on our own, and where we needed senior support. Overall, it’s been positive, and has dealt with 95% of the issues we had previously.
Emily Pannell, ward manager, Level 9 Medical Ward at RACH, talked about the differences in her area since completing PFIS training. “The status sheets and daily huddles we have been having have come up in a lot of appraisals as being beneficial. But a lot of the big improvements we are still working on, including “home for lunch” which starts this week.
“Together with the medical team, we will be working to increase discharges by midday. We have 3 Senior House Officers (SHO) on each shift, who currently follow the registrar and consultant – now one will be designated to completing discharge letters in real-time rather than waiting for the ward round, and also preparing letters in advance where possible.
At Southlands Hospital the Outpatient Services Booking team are based in a call centre environment with high volumes of patient communication taking place over the phone each day. Through their PFIS training, they have identified backlogs and issues around ‘Docman Tasks’, which are electronic consultant comments informing them which clinic to book a patient on to. They are now looking to improve their processes and standards around these worklists, helping to reduce patient wait times for triaging, and calling into the team.
Meanwhile, the Discharge Coordinators at Worthing have been looking at improving their expected discharges dates (EDD) by allocating an EDD to 90% of patients within 24 hours. And at St Richard’s Hospital, the Referral Hub team have found their improvement huddles have generated lots of new ideas, such as the introduction of daily huddles where they discuss and divide worklists around the wider team, and changes that improve their office space.
Congratulations to all the graduates! To find out more contact the Kaizen Office on [email protected].