HIN and ICHP welcome new members of Q

On 18 January, Patient Safety held a welcome event for new Q members from south and north west London alongside Imperial College Health Partners AHSN.

The Q Initiative is a long-term programme aiming to connect individuals and support their improvement work. It has been designed to complement and enhance other initiatives and networks. People in the Q Community pool together their knowledge, insight and connections – encouraging collaborative ways of making improvements.

The event was jam-packed with talks from a variety of speakers touching on a number of thought-provoking subjects. The delegates were also diverse – we welcomed 49 new members from across south London from a range of organisations including hospitals, charities, universities and CCGs.

Now we have a nucleus of Q members across the region, they are encouraged to take the initiative and self-organise we will be running a series of activities and workshops to support and advance our improvement efforts across south London. You can find out more about our improvement work in south London by visiting the patient safety pages on the HIN website https://healthinnovationnetwork.com/patient-safety/ or email Ericbarratt@nhs.net.

Please read further for a summary of the event.

The day started off with an introduction from our very own Patient Safety and Experience Director Catherine Dale. Catherine has more than fifteen years’ experience in improvement and transformation roles and gave an insight into quality improvement in an NHS capacity.

Penny Pereira, Deputy Director of Improvement at The Health Foundation gave a fascinating talk on ‘Q National Perspective’. She congratulated new Q members on joining the community and detailed the opportunities members can get involved with highlighting Twitter prompting Qs to follow @theQCommunity and follow conversations via #Qcommunity, sign up for RCTs (Random Coffee Trials) with other Qs and join a Special Interest Group via the Q member website. Penny talked about the Q Exchange launching in April where Q members can bid for funding to support their improvement ideas.

We then had a fantastic talk from former HINster Sheena Visram who is Quality Improvement Lead at Imperial NHS on ‘Building Local Context’. Sheena has significant provider experience and a focus on building a culture of continuous improvement. Sheena gave an inspiring talk about forming partnerships and socialising healthcare.

In the afternoon, delegates were able to choose from a range of workshops including:

1. A Life QI demonstration from Jason Williams, Business Development Director. Life QI is a platform that enables frontline staff to easily run improvement projects, allows central QI teams to coordinate the portfolio of work and provides senior execs the targeted information they need to make crucial decisions. It facilitates communication and sharing amongst project teams and makes aggregating and reporting results simple. Life QI is available to all of our members. If you would like to sign up to QI, or hear more about it, please email Jemima Heard;
2. Involving patients in QI led by Catherine Dale on Effectively involving and engaging patients in improvement work;
3. Behavioural insights in healthcare led by Dan Berry, Behavioural Insights Strategist at Hill + Knowlton Strategies. This explored how behavioural science has and can be used to improve healthcare;
4. Accountable care in healthcare led by Katja Behrendt, Innovation Delivery Manager and Dr Manpreet Bains, General Practitioner & Advisor, ICHP. This workshop looked at developing outcome based commissioning and accountable care systems;
5. Bringing innovation into quality improvement led by Dr Shirlene Oh, Director of Commerce and Tim Morrell from ?What IF! Together, Tim and Shirlene explored bringing innovation into quality improvement.

We rounded off the day with a look into the future with Richard Taunt of Kaleidoscope health & care. Richard delivered a thought-provoking engaging session to get new Qs to think creatively about the future of health and care.

Now we have a great number of Q members across the region, they are encouraged to take the initiative and self-organise. However, we will be running a series of activities and workshops to support and advance our improvement efforts across south London. You can find out more about our improvement work in south London by visiting the patient safety pages on the HIN website https://healthinnovationnetwork.com/patient-safety/ or email Ericbarratt@nhs.net