Teams from across the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Trust and wider healthcare system are celebrating this week after picking up a prestigious HSJ Patient Safety Award at a glittering event in Manchester.
The Trust’s winning project was “Giving Back the Gift of Time – Improving the Last 1000 Days of Life”, which won the Best Use of Integrated Care and Partnership Working in Patient Safety Award.
Working with care homes, residents and community services, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust took a quality improvement approach to understanding why people end up in hospital.
A QI collaborative delivered during the pandemic looked at reducing the number broken hips, known clinically as a fractured neck of femur (#NOF).
Initial results were impressive with a statistically significant reduction in hospital attendances and partnerships between organisations that don’t usually work together.
Speaking about the award, Katharine Goldthorpe, Associate Director of Quality Improvement at the Trust said: “Blackpool Teaching Hospitals and partners from care homes shone brightly last night at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards at Central Manchester Convention Centre.
“Teams were shortlisted for three awards which was a phenomenal achievement. We are so proud to share that our hospital and care home teams have worked together and were announced winners of the ‘Best Use of Integrated Care and Partnership Working in Patient Safety’.
“This work shows the power of collaboration with the use of QI methods to drive safer outcomes for residents of local care homes. Some of those people could be in the last 1000 days of life, so this project has meant less unnecessary attendances to hospital so they are able to stay in the place they love, with the people they love for longer. This first group of care homes have been brilliant to work with and we can’t wait to get started with scaling this work up.”
The Awards ceremony plays a key part in the 2-day HSJ Patient Safety Congress, which took place on 24 & 25 October. Chair of the 2022 Congress is Shaun Lintern, Health Editor of the Sunday Times. He comments; “The HSJ Patient Safety Awards ceremony was such a highlight of the Congress and I’d like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to Blackpool Teaching Hospitals on winning the Best Use of Integrated Care and Partnership Working in Patient Safety Award. They really do embody everything our speakers and delegates had been discussing and debating over the course of the Congress, as well as demonstrating that everybody has a role to play in patient safety.”