Improving outcomes for ‘Deteriorating Patients’ in the South West

A new network has been formed in the South West to improve the care and outcomes for patients in health and care settings in the region whose health is at risk of or is deteriorating.

Deterioration is when a patient’s health worsens suddenly due to illnesses, infections and conditions, such as sepsis.

The new network will support the implementation of the national Deteriorating Patient workstream, delivered by the country’s 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs). The national workstream aims to reduce avoidable harm and enhance the outcomes and experience of patients across England who are deteriorating. The PSCs are funded by NHS Improvement and delivered by the Academic Health Science Networks.

The South West Patient Safety Collaborative, delivered by the South West Academic Health Science Network, will launch ‘Deteriorating Patient Improvement Network – South West’ through a series of learning events, taking place in the region on 7 June 2018, 27 September 2018 and 31 January 2019.

The Improvement Network and its learning events are open to all health and care professionals in the South West and will use quality improvement (QI) methodology to support and encourage:

• The adoption and spread of evidence-based tools across the whole health and care system to improve, assess and monitor patients who are deteriorating, including National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) – a recently updated version of the NEWS tool, used to improve the recognition of severity of illness in unwell patients and trigger the escalation of care.
• The adoption and spread of evidence-based interventions to improve how we respond to patients who are deteriorating.
• Encourage and enable the adoption and spread of structured communication tools, such as SBAR (situation, background, assessment, recommendation) – an easy to use, structured form of communication that enables information to be transferred accurately between individuals; and safety huddles – brief and routine meetings for sharing information about potential or existing safety problems facing patients or workers.

Robin Payne, Clinical Skills Facilitator (West), Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘I’m really excited to be part of this new Improvement Network in the South West. By working with the SW AHSN and other parts of the health and care system we can help improve the care of patients who are at risk of, or who may deteriorate. We already use NEWS, the early warning score tool, across all of our community and mental health inpatient services, as well as in patients own homes in district nursing. We are also currently working with our acute partner trust to bring NEWS2 into local practice very soon.’

If you are a user of Life QI, you can find a ‘driver diagram’ on the system detailing what is ‘driving’ or contributing to the achievement of the project’s aim. Life QI is a web platform designed to assist frontline health and social care staff in running safety and quality improvement (QI) projects.

For more information and to register your place for the learning events, please click here or contact deborah.gidman@swahsn.com.

Watch this short film to learn why you should join the Deteriorating Patient Improvement Network.