Raising Healthcare Standards

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    "Consistently good healthcare which continually improves is our aim."

    Archived Practice Development Projects

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    Conference for Allied Health Professionals

    The Annual Clinical Effectiveness & Practice Development Conference for Allied Health Professionals was held on 18 March 2005, at Inchyra Grange Hotel, Polmont.
     
    The theme for this year's conference was 'Future Direction: Demonstrating Impact'.
     
    The day was chaired by Dr Lesley Holdsworth and the key note speaker was Mr Peter Bates (National Framework for Service Change). Speakers included Penny Taylor (Health Correspondent) and Janette Barrie (Project Co-ordinator with NHS QIS and previously Clinical Nurse Specialist in Pain Management).
     
    There was a series of 9 workshops held in the afternoon session. Clinical workshops included: Musculoskeletal; Paediatrics; Chronic Conditions; Stroke and Mental Health. Other workshops include: demonstrating impact through IT; profiling therapy services; poster productions, and patient focus and public involvement.
    The conference attracted over 300 delegates.
     
    Evaluation results (Word, 891K, 4.13 mins)
     
    Visit the Allied Health Professions website.

    Clinical Quality Indicators in Nursing Project

    The Clinical Quality Indicators in Nursing project aims to scope, define, develop and pilot agreed clinical quality indicators for nursing, for use across NHSScotland. The project, commissioned by the Scottish Executive Health Department, based within NHS QIS, is supported by NHS Directors of Nursing - project steering and advice will come from a multi-professional advisory group (Project Steering Group) including lay people and an Expert Practitioner Service Group.

    Project scope

    The scope of the project is to examine the area of Clinical Quality Indicators within Nursing by means of selective literature search and review, both national and international, using recognised rigorous methodology. The aim of the scoping is:

    • To inform and advise the project by identifying and highlighting the key issues within the field of Clinical Indicators for Nursing, thus providing the evidence necessary to define 'Clinical Quality Indicators' for Nursing
    • An unambiguous definition of 'Clinical Quality Indicators' for nursing allows the project to progress and achieve its ultimate aim of identifying and developing potential Clinical Quality Indicators for Nursing. This can only be achieved by working in partnership with NHS Directors of Nursing and practitioners across Scotland
    • The final stage of the project is the piloting of these indicators at a local level, which will lay the foundation for the ongoing development and refining of Clinical Quality Indicators for Nursing.

    Click here to access the Project Initiation Document for the Clinical Quality Indicators for Nursing project (Word, 128K, 33 secs).

    Learn more about this project by viewing its page in the Current Projects section of this site.

    Evaluation of PDU Methodologies

    Along with NHS Education, we are commissioning a piece of work to investigate the various methods that have been tried for facilitating practice development amongst nurses and midwives. Central to this work will be an examination of the relative strengths of the method the PDU has been developing in conjunction with Glasgow Caledonian University over the past 4 years. This involves a 'virtual college' where practitioners come together via a dedicated interactive website (www.geronurse.com) to develop and share practice in a specialist area ? in this instance the care of older people.

    We believe this could be a successful and relatively resource-light way of bringing professionals together; NHS Education are interested in the concept and would consider its implementation on a much wider scale if results are favourable.

    Bereavement Care

    In 2005 the Practice Development Unit of NHS QIS, NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Executive commissioned a team from Robert Gordon University to undertake some work in the area of bereavement care. The first phase of this work was a systematic literature review of bereavement and bereavement care. A number of key messages were identified across the available literature.
     
    Findings from the literature review were used to inform a bereavement care workshop held on 6th July 2006. In order to enable an overview of current practice to complement the literature a second phase of consultation and mapping work was undertaken. The final report and a summary report from phase 2 of this project are now available.
     
    Bereavement Care Phase 2 Final Report (PDF, 988K, 4min 41secs)
    Bereavement Care Phase 2 Summary (PDF, 558K, 2mins 38secs)

    Practice Development Link Nurse / Midwife Network

    We have a core network of link nurses and midwives from across Scotland who work closely with us to discuss key issues relating to the practice development agenda, share information about best practice initiatives and identify priorities for the future.

    The network meets three times every year; the next meeting is due to take place on 1 December 2005 at the Lighthouse in Glasgow

    Notes from previous meetings are available below:

    We place great value on our relationships with individual network members and with the organisations they represent. If you would like to know who the link nurse or midwife is for your area please consult the table on the attached Excel document:

    Link Nurses Database (Excel, 47K, 12 secs)

    As part of the network, link nurses are expected to contribute to the national practice development agenda through attendance and participation in meetings and active dissemination of information within their own organisations about the work of the PDU. If there is no link nurse or midwife for your area and you are interested in taking on this role please contact us.

    Smoking Cessation

    Following on from NHS Health's recent smoking cessation campaign, we are looking at the best way to support staff working with patients in situations of enforced smoking cessation, i.e. those admitted to hospital, those too ill to smoke, those faced with a diagnosis of terminal illness.