Anne Pullyblank, Medical Director of the West of England AHSN and colorectal surgeon, was recognised as a finalist at the virtual HSJ Award ceremony last night (Wednesday 17 March).
The West of England AHSN were shortlisted for three awards, with our ReSPECT programme shortlisted for System Leadership Initiative of the Year, and our PReCePT programme shortlisted for Workforce Initiative. All three finalists celebrate our collaborative approach across our members.
Anne works collaboratively across our system, and to be shortlisted in a strong category of inspiring Clinical Leads is a fantastic example of her leadership and commitment to working together in a coordinated way across organisational and geographical boundaries to build sustainable, system-wide processes for better patient care.
Anne’s ambition upon joining the AHSN in 2014 was for our entire West of England NHS system to work together towards a common goal; to standardise the way patients at risk of deterioration are objectively assessed, and how that assessment is communicated across all settings and interfaces of care by adopting the National Early Warning Score (NEWS).
The rollout of the NEWS2 across the system won a number of awards, including a coveted HSJ Patient Safety Award and subsequent recognition both nationally and internationally. Working under Anne’s leadership the Patient Safety team won the BMJ Patient Safety Team of the Year in 2018. There have been a number of papers or journal articles published with Anne’s authorship listed in the supporting information to develop evidence of high quality care.
The last five years has seen Anne instrumental in leading and driving forward inter-trust or pan-system projects including ReSPECT (Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment). Anne has enabled the AHSN to build a consistent approach to quality improvement at every level and is currently developing a regional project focusing on supporting the Care Home sector.
ReSPECT was a key part of the region’s response to COVID-19, with our stakeholders able to meet the demand for more end of life conversations, and reduce the strain on staff. We look forward to continuing to embed ReSPECT across the West of England, including commencing roll out in Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire region from June.
To celebrate, we are today launching our new animation, “A Day in the Life of a ReSPECT form,” which was co-designed by people involved in the project across our region. The video tells the story of how a ReSPECT form can help improve communication and coordinate personalised, individualised care across the health and care system.
Anne also leads our local programme PreciSSIon (Preventing Surgical Site Infection across a region). PreciSSIon is a collaborative project to reduce the incidence of surgical site infection after elective colorectal surgery. The project started in November 2019 and involves all the hospitals in the West of England region. Watch our short film which introduces the project here.
Amongst many other projects, Anne has also been integral to the success of inter-region projects such as the Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative in partnership with Kent, Surrey and Sussex and Wessex AHSNs.
Following the awards, Anne said:
“I am honoured to have been shortlisted for this award on behalf of my colleagues who took the time to nominate me and for all the teams I collaborate with who work so hard to improve patient care.
I am proud to represent the West of England AHSN and consider this to be a celebration of all we have achieved together”.
Posted on March 18, 2021
