photo: The award winners at the Service Improvement Conference with Elfed Roberts, Chairman of the North West Wales NHS Trust

The fourth annual Service Improvement Conference took place recently to celebrate service improvements within the North West Wales Health Community.

The event at Bangor’s Technium CAST was hosted by the North West Wales NHS Trust and provided an opportunity to share good practice in improving the quality of patient care under the theme of ‘Aiming to Achieve’.

The aim of the day was to celebrate successful local service improvement stories and to present awards for the most successful projects of 2008. During the afternoon there was an opportunity for delegates to listen to a variety of presentations that reflected the modernisation agenda within the health community.

Prizes were awarded for service improvement under the following categories:

Best Sustainable Personal Improvement

Mandy Jones, Senior Nurse, Medical Assessment Unit, Ysbyty Gwynedd. Mandy has been the driving force behind the Progress Chasing Pilot within the Medical Directorate. She would like this to be considered as a Team effort which has resulted in a reduction in the time taken to admit patients from the assessment unit to other wards. This was achieved through the engagement of ward managers.

Best Team Service Improvement

This award was jointly presented to two teams. The first went to Rachel Williams and her team for the Enlli Ward Team ring fenced orthopaedic ward.
This project has resulted in a reduction in average length of patient stay from 7.5 to 4.8 days along with change of culture and empowering staff to challenge bad practice. This has been achieved through improved ownership of processes by all levels of staff on the ward with enhanced roles by Health Care Support Workers and one of its biggest successes is that there have been no reported infections for the last 2 months.

The other award was presented to Marnel Owen and Sharon Wells for their work in the community setting. Their team developed a standard procedure for performing first and subsequent dressings in the patient’s own home. Plastic boxes are now used to provide a clean work surface for staff as well as a dry and clean environment to store equipment where the home environment is not always conducive to reducing the risk of infections.

Best Health Community Service Improvement

This award was presented to Dr Damian McKeon and his team for the ongoing development of a multidisciplinary Sleep Apnoea Service within Gwynedd, Anglesey and Conwy. This aims to improve access and communication within primary and secondary care and patients are now seen in specialised multidisciplinary sleep clinics. The project will also improve patient information on treatments for sleep disorders including sleep apnoea.

Overall Winner: Stephen Jones, Head of Speech and Language Therapy

In May 2008 the North West Wales Trust were challenged with managing high numbers of children on the Speech and Language Therapy waiting list. At the time there were 233 children on the waiting list, waiting over 23 weeks. By September 2008, Stephen and his team had reduced the waiting list where only 66 children were waiting no longer than 13 weeks in a modern, efficient and effective department, using existing resources and staff.

Craig Barton, Executive Director of Operations and Service Improvement at the North West Wales NHS Trust said: “The conference provided an excellent opportunity to share good practice and celebrate the achievements of our staff over the year. It is the people who make the NHS so special and the event was a chance to recognise the commitment, creativity and adaptability of our staff in a challenging and changing environment that is the modern health service.”