A focus on improving communications to optimise patient safety was the genesis for a Quality Briefing initiative which has embedded a culture of ‘safety-first’.
A weekly Quality Briefing initiative, implemented by Dr Chris Zeitz and the Cardiology Team at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (TQEH), has united staff in their common purpose of delivering high quality, safe care for patients.
‘The Patient Safety First award exemplifies how ‘safety and quality is in our DNA’, and acknowledges putting the safety and quality of patient care first – each and every day,’ reports Dr Chris Zeitz, Head of Cardiology.
Creating opportunities for real-time conversations, the Quality Briefing supports a solutions-based approach to issues or problems. By enabling the delivery of feedback as close to real-time as possible, lessons learned can be immediately translated into practice.
A ‘safety-first’ culture
By involving the entire cardiology team every week, the Quality Briefing has firmly embedded a culture where the responsibility is on everyone to uphold safety. There is a heightened sense that where an issue may emerge, it will be rapidly detected and actioned.
‘This project has successfully united the clinical team in the common purpose of delivering high quality safe care to patients, while reflecting on data supporting that view in a timely fashion. The briefing is usually completed within just ten minutes, the idea being to check that our service is functioning as intended and any issues discussed while fresh in people’s minds and promptly addressed.
‘The Quality Briefing for TQEH cardiology team has become a ‘work in progress’ as other elements for review are added over time. This model could easily be adopted by any health care service. A key part of the briefing is reporting on patient surveys completed in the previous week, says Dr Chris Zeitz.
‘Our key purpose is to serve our patients and it is critical that we not only seek their feedback but do it in a meaningful timeframe. We survey both our elective and emergency patients every week and report their feedback at the Quality Briefing every week. In this way, the staff that cared for the patients in the past week receive immediate feedback from patients about the care they received.’
Patients are invited to select any member of staff for special mention, with around two thirds of patients thanking the whole team and approximately a third will praise an individual or two. ‘Staff greatly enjoy this feedback which is overwhelmingly positive.’
World-class care award
In celebration of CALHN’s World Class Care Day, the recipients of our inaugural Quality & Improvement Awards were announced on 26 March 2021. Congratulations to Dr Chris Zeitz & TQEH Cardiology team for winning a World-Class Care Quality Award in the Patient Safety First category for ‘Quality Briefing’.
The cash prize will be used to provide patient-facing performance data in the cardiac ward and the cardiac interventional suites, reinforcing that patient safety and wellbeing is our principle concern.
