Elizabeth Beech is National Project Lead for Healthcare Acquired Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance at NHS England, and a pharmacist for Bath and North East Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (BANES CCG). Here Elizabeth writes about how her involvement with the AHSN and the Q community has helped her to make productive connections and improve local practice.
I’ve worked with the AHSN on a number of different projects over the past few years, but recently I’ve found being a member of the Q community really valuable. When I joined Q, I set myself the challenge of setting up a community of practice to improve the management of urinary tract infections (UTI). I tracked down some really useful advice from other Q members about the best technology to use, and now host a great network of 400+ improvers discussing UTI issues across a number of countries.
Another productive connection occurred at a national Q event where I met an experienced Q member who wanted to improve GP engagement with his local diabetic improvement programme. BANES CCG were planning a process mapping workshop as part of our programme to improve GP practice based management of hypertension in the diabetic population. This was a great opportunity to import some expert Quality Improvement (QI) facilitation skills for our local workshop and enable GP engagement – a very definite win-win for both organisations and the GP practices involved.
Facilitating the use of QI processes in GP practices has also started to change the local QI culture, with some practices using process mapping to start to improve other elements of practice activity.
The AHSN offers so much more than the Q community – I’m also a part of the Primary Care Collaborative (PCC). The AHSN pulls together organisations in the West of England and makes it easier to collaborate across healthcare systems.
The AHSN and Q Community have enabled me to develop direct, purposeful working relationships with a whole range of other people working in and around the health and care system. It’s a community that allows you to dive straight in and get to the productive discussions that lead to improvements in safe and effective patient care.
This story is a highlight from our 2017/18 annual review: joining the dots to healthcare innovation. Check out the full review here.
Posted on July 27, 2018 by Elizabeth Beech, National Project Lead for Healthcare Acquired Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance, NHS England
