A presentation and celebration of some of the best improvement work undertaken by NHS Shetland teams during the past year was held virtually today when staff presented eleven projects to their colleagues, the Board and the media for the annual Celebrating Excellence in Care Awards.
The event, organised by Director of Nursing and Acute Services Kathleen Carolan, shone the spotlight on different parts of the health care service.
The main focus was on how different parts of the health services have been navigating the
challenges as a consequence of the pandemic and remobilising services.
Mrs Carolan said the quality of the improvement work had been of such a high standard that it had been be a “very difficult decision” for the panel to decide the winners. “A common theme in many of the presentations was that teams in Shetland were leading the way in Scotland with lots of examples where we are developing new ways of working that other Health Boards could learn from. This shows the boldness and bravery of our teams to break new ground and be innovative”.
The judges included Anne Armstrong, Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, Scottish Government; Kathy Hubbard and Colin Campbell, NHS Shetland Non Executive Board members and Joanne Adamson, Lay Representative for the Integration Joint Board.
The five categories included:
Practice education: This was aimed at projects where the focus was on training, awareness raising or role development.
Trainee Assistant Practitioner, Katherine Umphray won this award for her work in developing new ways of working as an Assistant Practitioner in the Out Patient Department. Katherine described how she is developing new skills to support new services in Shetland and how she supports other members of the team, including Student Nurses to develop their skills.
Innovation in practice: This was for any project that had brought a new approach into practice.
This award went to Dawn Smith, Deputy Director of Acute Care; Gai Walls, Ophthalmology Specialist Nurse; Andrea Sherwood, Pre-operative Assessment Nurse and Joanna Orlowski, CDU Supervisor on behalf of the wider team supporting the Vanguard project. They received the innovation award for the work they did to design and deliver an enhanced programme of elective care, resulting in over 400 patients receiving life changing orthopaedic and cataract procedures in 2022.
Person centred care: For any project that had specifically enhanced the focus on the individual and the quality of their care.
Michelle Hankin, Clinical Governance & Risk Lead received the person centred care award for the quality improvement project she led to introduce a radio frequency treatment pathway for patients with chronic pain in Shetland.
Prevention: This was for projects where the focus was on self-management, health improvement or realistic medicine.
This category was won by Rhona McArthur, Team Leader and Karen Tekin, Specialist Nurse with the Substance Misuse and Recovery Service. They received this award in recognition of the work that the SMRS team has undertaken to introduce new form of opioid substitution therapy (OST) that offers people who are dependent on opioids (such as heroin) an alternative, prescribed medicine.
The fifth category recognised the impact of partnership working and included any aspect of service improvement.
This award was won by Margarita Nesbit, Consultant Sonographer; for the work that she has led with healthcare professionals based in Shetland and Aberdeen to offer specialist diagnostic tests not previously available locally. This includes ultrasound guided biopsies and others scans for rheumatology, musculoskeletal and head and neck conditions.
Chair of the judging panel Anne Armstrong said that those presenting and the teams that they represent “demonstrated a very high calibre of improvement work which deserves to be shared nationally to spread new ways of working and good practice. The panel wanted to convey to everybody that what was presented was outstanding. What really shone through was the focus on putting the patient and their families at the centre of care and how that had such a positive impact on the quality of the patients experience and the quality of their care ”.