Access our support and expertise:
Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer for England at NHS England and Improvement, presented awards to East Midlands care homes to recognise their successes in improving the quality and safety of care.
An event held at Trent Vineyard in Nottingham on Friday 7 February saw the presentation of six awards, highlighting the achievement of individuals and care homes across the region. The awards included ‘Outstanding Individual of the Year’ and ‘Care Home of the Year’.
The awards were for care homes participating in a patient safety improvement project where care homes are supported to introduce a tool which measures the prevalence of common care issues such as pressure ulcers, continence, nutrition, falls, restraint and pain. This tool, the Landielijke Prevalentiemeting Zorgkwaliteit (or LPZ for short), was developed by Maastricht University in the Netherlands and is now used in Austria, Turkey and Switzerland – with the East Midlands being the first in the UK to adopt it.
Routinely reviewing LPZ data, allows care homes to make improvements to the care they deliver resulting in reduced falls, reduced pressure ulcers and improved continence and pain management.
65 care homes across the five counties of the region are now using LPZ and have the potential to make huge improvements to the care they deliver1,617 care home residents will benefit from the improvements being made.
The programme was first introduced in 2015 by the East Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative (EMPSC) – a programme of work by the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN). Commissioned by the NHS, the EMPSC and EMAHSN work to spread innovative processes and technologies, create efficiencies and improve patient safety within the health and care system.
When opening the awards, Ruth spoke about 2020 as ‘the Year of the Nurse and Midwife’ a campaign to celebrate Florence Nightingale’s bicentennial year. She spoke about those in caring professions striving to make improvements and this group’s efforts being a testament to that.
Ruth said “Thank you for allowing me to be here. I wasn’t Chief Nursing Officer when I first saw this programme and went to Maastricht with some of the colleagues in this room. I can’t believe that five years has gone by, there were 12 care homes then and now there’s 60 something of you. It is amazing to see the LPZ movement getting to where it is – it is a huge privilege to share with you and I’m proud of all of your hard work… If only we could have LPZ across the whole of England we would see a huge benefit.”
Eddie Alder, Head of Patient Safety at the East Midlands PSC said “It was great to see our LPZ care homes come together today to celebrate their achievements. This programme is particularly pertinent as it highlights what can be achieved if we invest in care home professionals and encourage quality improvement, and the wider benefit this can have to patients. Ruth May joining us to recognise the efforts of our care homes and the quality improvement successes across the region has been extremely rewarding for our homes and the organisation.”
The winners of this year’s LPZ awards were:
Anita Astle, who is Managing Director of Wren Hall Nursing Home and winner of the LPZ Ambassador award said: “It’s a great honour to have received this award and to have Ruth May hand it to me meant even more. My home has participated in LPZ since day one and we have seen consistent improvements. We have recently been rated as outstanding in all five domains by the CQC (Care Quality Commission), which is rare, and I was able to use our LPZ results to provide evidence of our standards and improvements.”
Jack Titteron, Care Home Manager at Church Farm Nursing Home and winner of Outstanding Individual of the Year said “As a new manager to my care home, the LPZ audit really came at the right time. I needed to get to grips with areas that could be or needed to be improved and this really shone a light on those areas. When you can see year-on-year how you’re improving and you can see the difference it’s fantastic. It’s more than just a tool to improve the care it has improved everyone’s attitudes and everyone’s willingness to learn. I’m so grateful to have been given this award, but really it was a team effort and everyone pulled together to make these improvements in our homes.”
Evaluation of the impact of using the LPZ data audit tool in care homes is on-going with a view to future wider roll-out in other regions outside of the East Midlands.
- ends –
Media enquiries:
Jayne Holgate 0115 748 4243 / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Chris Taylor 0115 748 4242 / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
About LPZ
The East Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative (EMPSC) has worked with the University of Nottingham, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Nottingham CityCare Partnership and Derbyshire and Nottingham Clinical Commissioning Groups to roll out LPZ training for care home staff and support the audit of care homes data.
The tool was developed by Maastricht University in the Netherlands and is now used in Austria, Turkey and Switzerland and has been delivered in the East Midlands since 2015. It was selected as an evidence-based approach to supporting care homes to make improvements.
Evaluation of the impact of using the LPZ data audit tool in care homes is on-going with a view to future, wider roll-out in other regions outside of the East Midlands.
About EMPSC
The East Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative (EMPSC) is funded by NHS Improvement and hosted by the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN) – it is one of 15 PSCs in England working across the health and care system to improve patient safety.
www.healthinnovation-em.org.uk
About NHS Improvement
NHS Improvement is responsible for overseeing foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers that provide NHS-funded care. It offers the support providers need to give patients consistently safe, high quality, compassionate care within local health systems that are financially sustainable. By holding providers to account and, where necessary, intervening, it helps the NHS to meet its short-term challenges and secure its future. www.improvement.nhs.uk
Since 1 April 2016, NHS Improvement has been the operational name for an organisation that brings together the work previously delivered by:
Monitor NHS Trust Development Authority Patient Safety (including the National Reporting and Learning System) Advancing Change Team Intensive Support Teams.