Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust (SHSC) has been nominated for five awards through the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Patient Safety Awards 2023.

The prestigious awards help drive improvements in culture and quality across the NHS. 

The projects shortlisted will find out if they have won at the awards ceremony on 18 September.

Salli Midgley, SHSC’s Director of Nursing, Professions and Quality, said: “We are delighted to have the work of some of our teams recognised in this year’s awards, we know that our teams have been working hard on their improvement journeys and to be shortlisted is a great boost to the teams in having their work externally validated. 

“As SHSC continues to improve and innovate we keep patient safety and experience at the heart of our ambitions, that is why we promote co development & production in all of our improvement work. 

“Well done to everyone involved, both our frontline clinical teams but also those support services, managers and leaders who work to support the delivery of clinical care.”

SHSC has been shortlisted five times across four different award categories. The projects shortlisted are below. There is information about the project and a photograph of team members / people involved in the project in the gallery.

• Holistic care in the community: Empowering mental health staff to provide better care for physical health for people with mental health illness in the community

This initiative has been nominated for the Community Care initiative of the year award.

Sherrie Richardson is an Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) for the Older Adult Home Treatment Team and the project lead. Speaking about what the project has meant, Sherrie said: “The Older Adult Physical Health Team has transformed how we approach physical health. Pioneered by advanced support workers, all patients now have a physical health review upon entry to the team, along with home-based ECG administration and venepuncture. This not only optimises holistic, person-centred, collaborative care for the patient, but also enables a significantly disadvantaged population to have equitable access to health assessment, with appropriate monitoring and signposting.”

• The impact of HUSH huddles on the rate of falls in an older adult inpatient mental health units

This project has been nominated for the Mental Health Safety Improvement Award.

Falls are extremely common in older adults, especially when admitted to hospital and reducing them is a top priority for SHSC.

To address the risk of falls, a Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare (HUSH) huddle was introduced involving a daily meeting at 9am of staff from across a ward to address risk factors and the management plan around falls. This has led to a 50% reduction in the falls.

Consultant Claire Pocklington said: “The introduction of HUSH huddles has had a positive impact on both service user and staff well-being. The success we’ve seen is due to everyone who works on the ward contributing regardless of role.”

• The respect team are here to talk about restrictive practice – improving safety through conversation, collaborative understanding and action

This project has been nominated for the Mental Health Safety Improvement Award and the Patient Safety Team of the year award.

In 2021 SHSC embarked on a journey to reduce the use of restrictive practice and to start a conversation about 'Let’s talk about restrictive practice'. These conversations helped us to develop and implement a Least Restrictive Practice Strategy in collaboration with people who use and experience our Care. The strategy was more than just paper, it was the gateway to culture change to help us be open about the need for improvement and to ensure that all care provided is safe, positive and efficiently incorporates wellbeing, least restrictive practices, human rights and choice and engagement.

Nurse Consultant for Restrictive Practice Lorena Cain and Greg Hughes Professional Lead for RESPECT said: "Being shortlisted is a recognition of all the work we have done across SHSC with people to help us understand and talk about restrictive practice with the hope that we can reduce it and all have a better experience of care. Working alongside people and teams, watching and seeing them challenge and be challenged, having fears raised and addressed, giving hope and being onboard has been amazing. Staff comments have shown that everyone wants to make a difference, that they came into this job to support and work with people and that no-one wants to restrain or restrict. Working alongside people with lived experience has helped us really understand experiences and things to think about and has paved the way for the improvement we have made and continue to make. Its not been easy, it has its ups and downs but the people of SHSC (staff and service users alike) are making this happen."

• Let’s talk about sex, Safeguarding without removing self-independence within specialist inpatient rehabilitation units in a mental health Trust

This project has been nominated for the Developing a Positive Safety Culture award.
 
We wanted to improve how we have conversations about sexual safety and to equip service users with the skilled need to have safe, supportive and honest conversations around intimacy.

As part of that staff needed to feel confident in having those conversations with service user as part of a trauma led approach. 

Senior Practitioner and project lead Juliet Miller, said:

“We have worked really hard since we started the sexual safety project and are really pleased to have been shortlisted.  We are so proud of the way our service users have become empowered with feeling safe to speak about sexual safety and sexual heath. If it wasn’t for engaging with the Sexual safety collaborative project work, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”