How WEAHSN are benefiting from Life QI!

The West of England Academic Health Science Network (WEAHSN) is one of 15 AHSNs across England helping to deliver positive healthcare outcomes regionally and nationally. This is done by driving service improvement and the development and adoption of new innovations and ways of working.

In doing so the impact of the WEAHSN's work is far reaching: from enhancing patient wellbeing and outcomes, identifying patients that are deteriorating to save lives and mitigating high risk incidents such as strokes; to enhancing efficiencies in healthcare practice and boosting the local economy through business sector collaborations.

The WEAHSN work alongside a range of partners – health service providers, care professionals, commissioners, service users, businesses, universities and other research bodies – to act upon healthcare challenges and opportunities for the ultimate benefit of the patient. With patients and the public playing an increasing role in their own care and that of others, the WEAHSN work closely with Public and Patient representatives across all our workstreams.

Kevin Hunter, Patient Safety Programme Manager from WEAHSN gives us an insight into how Life QI is supporting their collaborative work across the West of England region.

Where it all started …

We adopted Life QI system in January 2016. Since then we have been working with the core stakeholders in our region to make best use of it to support our regional patient safety capability and priorities. Across our region there are now over 150 projects being run by around 380 people.

Our Patient Safety Collaborative …

The West of England AHSN Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) is one of 15 PSCs across England. Through our Collaborative, we are facilitating local patients and healthcare staff to work together to enhance the safety of our patients whilst in healthcare services, making sure their wellbeing is paramount at all times.

Our Goal …

By March 2019, everyone (patients and the public) in the West of England can be confident that care is safer for patients based on a culture of openness, collaboration, continual learning and improvement.

Our priorities …

Our priorities fall into a number of main themes, including national Patient Safety Collaborative workstreams:

1. Deteriorating patients incorporating the National Early Warning Scores (NEWS) & Sepsis, Emergency Department Checklist, Mortality Reviews (Learning from Deaths) and the Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative. Read more about our work on safer care for the deteriorating patient.
2. Collaborating with the community, where we are leading a number of collaboratives including primary care, medicines safety, community providers and mental health. The work supports our delivery of the national Culture and Leadership workstream. Read more about 'Patient Safety Collaborative'.
3. Maternal & Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, which is a 3 year NHS Improvement programme launched in February 2017. Locally we are working in partnership with our Local Maternity Systems to support maternal and neonatal care services to provide a safe, reliable and quality healthcare experience to all women, babies and families across maternity care settings in England. Read more about the Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative.

How Life QI is improving quality and patient safety across our region …

We're using Life QI to collaborate and share information on joint safety projects that span across multiple organisations. The platform enables collaboration and makes it easy to collect data from our member organisations without sending large files by email or having to deal with IT interoperability issues. It has never been so easy to work together on improvement and safety projects.

Individual teams are able to use Life QI in unique ways to support their initiatives. Our Medicines Safety Collaborative used Life QI to generate driver diagrams live on the platform at their collaborative event, and also use the platform to share documents with steering group members. Organisations in the Safer Care Through National Early Warning Score (NEWS) programme have used the platform to quickly and efficiently produce run charts.

The best thing about Life QI is …

Using it to collaborate and share information on joint safety projects that span across multiple organisations.

You can find out more about the WEAHSN and what they do by visiting their website and social media channels:

Visit the WEAHSN website or follow @weahsn