This week’s leadership messages are from Rebecca Lawton and Amy Whitaker

Posted on: 17 March 2023

This week’s leadership message comes from Rebecca Lawton (PhD), Professor, Psychology of Healthcare, Director, NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre and Theme Lead for NIHR ARC Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Science theme. Rebecca is also the Academic Director of Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Academy.

We also have a blog from Amy Whitaker, Chief Finance Officer, Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Wakefield District Health & Care Partnership.

Rebecca Lawton Hello.

On 1 April, the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration (YH-PSRC) will be launched in the region. This research centre is a collaboration between University of Leeds and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT). We are one of six PSRCs in the country funded for the next five years to work with our NHS and social care partners across the region and I am delighted to say that we, in Yorkshire and Humber, are the largest centre in the country.

This national funding is an evolution of the current NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC) scheme. Previous research undertaken through the scheme has already had an impact on NHS frontline services. The funding we have received over the past five years from NIHR has supported the team to:

develop an intervention to reduce delays in diagnosing cancer in primary care
demonstrate how people with learning disabilities experience poorer patient safety outcomes in hospital
work with older patients, doctors, nurses and pharmacists to develop tools that support safer use of medicines e.g. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/12/3/e054279.full.pdf.

We have also designed tools that help healthcare staff to make more accurate decisions about which patients in their care are most poorly (https://carssresearch.org) and designed and evaluated training and resources to reduce staff burnout and help retain staff e.g. https://secondvictim.co.uk.

Our vision for the new NIHR YH-PSRC is to co-produce, implement and evaluate innovative solutions to make care safer for patients and their families. These will be grounded in an understanding of the realities of health and social care systems, particularly in this Covid-19 recovery period. We understand that healthcare is delivered and experienced by patients across a complex health and social care system. Acknowledging and embracing this complexity is essential if we are to deliver effective solutions to patient safety problems. Our themes of work address four of the strategic patient safety challenges identified by NHS England. Each theme addresses a piece of the jigsaw of optimising safety in complex integrated care systems:

the importance for safety of just and learning cultures
the need to know how safe services are now, and in the future, not just how safe they were in the past
the value of evidence about what are effective safety practices (and what are not)
the key role that patients/families play in managing safety at home.

Over the next five years our aim is to deliver a programme of work in these areas by focusing on four themes of work (see diagram).

Safer Care. The four themes of work are; supporting sage care in the home, re-thinking safety intelligence for improvement, de-cluttering (safely) for safety and safer systems cultures and practices.

We will develop solutions and ideas (with patients and staff) that will make care safer by supporting patients/families, changing practice, informing policy makers and regulators and guiding leaders. Further to this we will generate evidence about disparities in safety to help tackle safety inequity.

We will use the funding wisely to collaborate with a range of partners (local, national and international), develop our research team and grow income so that we can respond rapidly to patient safety challenges now and in the future. In the process, we will advance safety science.

Over the next five years, the PSRCs will help researchers to develop and test innovations, approaches and interventions that will improve patient safety and the safety of health and care services. The funding will also enable partnerships to be built between health and care organisations, universities, local authorities, and patients and the public.

For more information about how to get involved in the work of the Yorkshire and Humber collaboration, visit: www.yhpstrc.org.

If you are a patient, carer or an interested citizen, you can join the Safety In Numbers Group (SING), work with us through our community networks or get involved as a lay leader.

If you are a member of staff in a health or social care setting and you want to find out more about the work of the centre or to join one of the projects, please keep an eye on the website for opportunities for short and long-term secondments, developing and testing new solutions and training. Contact Lucy Chapman or Lucy Sobia Bibi at yqsradmin@bthft.nhs.uk

Thank you for reading and have a good weekend,
Rebecca

This week’s blog comes from Amy Whitaker, Chief Finance Officer, Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Wakefield District Health & Care Partnership

Amy Whitaker Hi, my name is Amy and I am the Chief Finance Officer for Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust and Wakefield Health & Care Partnership. My role is designed to test out a new way of working where we combine the role of a provider Director of Finance with a responsibility across Place as well. This is really exciting for me, as I am hoping it will enable us to continue to build on our great relationships with our partners, be able to think about our services across Wakefield, and do the right thing for our patients without money becoming a barrier to our success.

I have been in my role for 6 months now, having started in September 2022 and am really enjoying being part of a different West Yorkshire system, having previously worked at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust (part of the Bradford District & Craven Place) for 11 years. Working within finance in West Yorkshire is a fulfilling role and I am extremely lucky to work with a group of supportive and inspiring Finance Directors. We have worked together over several years, building trust and mutual respect, which is adding lots of value as we work through the current system change. As Finance Directors we all play our part in supporting the work of the wider Integrated Care System as well as our own organisations to help drive forward the success of West Yorkshire as a whole, for example I am the lead Finance Director for Digital and Diagnostics which has been exciting to be part of as we develop our plans for Community Diagnostic Systems and Electronic Patient Record systems.

In my Place role I have been enjoying working with partners from outside of the NHS. We recently had our first Wakefield Place Finance Leaders meeting which included colleagues from the West Yorkshire ICB, South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation Trust, Wakefield Council, our Hospices and the Voluntary Sector. We spent the time discussing the outlook for the next financial year, but also how we will work together on the finances to unblock some of the frustrations which are created by organisational boundaries. As a group we want to work together to help shape and support colleagues in developing our strategic direction, which is a ‘Home First’ model of care, shifting investment to out of hospital care to reduce demand on acute services, and to ensure we are spending the money in the best way for our population. Following our first meeting I am optimistic that these relationships will reap rewards for Wakefield.

Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield Ridings Building - Dewsbury hospital $Pontefract Hospital$ One thing that I am extremely passionate about is the equality and diversity of our finance teams across West Yorkshire (and nationally). I Chair the North East & Yorkshire Diversity & Inclusion Ambassador network and recently presented to the HFMA Conference on Workforce Inequalities in NHS Finance. Finance remains one of the workforces in the NHS where there is a significant gap in equality at Director of Finance level versus the make-up of the people we employ. And the make-up of the people we employ does not align to our populations. Ultimately, we need to do more to encourage a diverse workforce and then to support them to thrive and achieve. I reflect that, across West Yorkshire, we have a good mix of female and male Finance Directors, however we are not where we want to (or need to) be with regards to other underrepresented groups. In the Acute Sector there is a significant lack of diversity across our Directors of Finance, which makes it even more important for us all to consider how we recruit into these positions, what we offer, and how we make roles attractive to a wider market. Within the ICS Finance Forum we have a conversation every month on the work that is happening locally and nationally on this agenda so that we can take learning back into our organisations, implement best practice, and lead on making change happen.

I am so proud to be a part of the West Yorkshire ICS and think we can do great things through our level of ambition and the work happening in each of the Places across our system.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog,
Amy

What else has been happening this week?

West Yorkshire recognised for providing welcoming and accessible healthcare services

Proud to achieve Partnership of Sanctuary We are delighted to celebrate becoming the first Partnership of Sanctuary in the country. This is for going above and beyond to welcome people seeking sanctuary into West Yorkshire.

To celebrate the occasion and find out more about what it means to be a Partnership of Sanctuary, dignitaries and other special guests including council leaders, people with lived experience and representatives from community organisations gathered at an event at The Art House in Wakefield on Thursday afternoon.

The City of Sanctuary made the award following an assessment of the Partnership’s activities to provide safe, welcoming and accessible healthcare for refugees and asylum seekers. At the event, guests heard from those involved in the journey so far and about how we work across Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District to build a more welcoming West Yorkshire.

Watch out for pictures and more from the event in next week’s update.

Every Sleep a Safe Sleep

Safer Sleep Week 13-19 March 2023 This week 13 to 19 March is Safer Sleep Week - the Lullaby Trust’s national awareness campaign aimed at anyone looking after a young baby. The aim is to raise awareness of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and provide simple advice to reduce the risk of it occurring.

The theme for this year is co-sleeping. Open, non-judgmental conversations are crucial to reducing unsafe sleep practices and allow parents to prepare a safer space for planned co-sleeping or if they fall asleep without intending to.

The Lullaby Trust has developed a range of supporting resources and information on safer co-sleeping aimed at new and expectant parents. See the Safer Sleep Week - The Lullaby Trust pages for more information.

As part of the week, we are also encouraging training leads from partner organisations to sign up for the next Every Sleep a Safe Sleep ‘train the trainer’ session on Wednesday, 29 March from 2 till 5. Email Valerie Mzizi on valerie.mzizi@nhs.net to register your interest. For more information see our Every Sleep a Safe Sleep resources page.

Local research project featured in national guidance

Work we have been doing across the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) area has been featured in new national guidance that has been issued this week by NHS England. Maximising the benefits of research: guidance for integrated care systems explains the legal duties and other requirements around research that ICBs are required to follow. It also describes how ICBs should use evidence from research and include research in forward planning and reporting.

Across West Yorkshire we host world-leading research departments and studies that have established strong links between our academic institutions and our health and care systems. With a history of using research to make changes in the way health and care services are planned and delivered, we are proud that one of our studies is included in this national guidance. The Campaign to Reduce Opioid Prescription (CROP), led by researchers at the University of Leeds, has resulted in 15,000 fewer people being prescribed opioids (a 5.63% relative reduction), providing a net saving to the NHS of £700,000. The campaign has subsequently been rolled out across all ICBs in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the North East and North Cumbria ICB, with now covering 1,045 GP practices.

Colleagues from the West Yorkshire Research and Development team would like to say thank you to all those GP practices from across West Yorkshire who helped us set up and develop the CROP campaign in our region before we rolled it out wider. We could not have achieved the results we have without your support.