150 quality improvement projects to celebrate 150 years of Evelina London

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, chair of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and previously NHS England’s national medical director

Staff from across Evelina London came together to celebrate improving services for families at a conference described as a ‘festival of quality improvement’.

Hosted annually, the Evelina London Quality Improvement Conference is now in its fifth year. The conference provides an opportunity to focus on the importance of working to improve the experiences of children and young people in healthcare at Evelina London and beyond.

A wide range of staff across our children’s hospital and community services celebrated their commitment to improvement, showing that anyone can contribute to making a difference. An incredible display of 150 posters demonstrated that commitment with details of 150 projects undertaken by Evelina London teams.

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, chair of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and previously NHS England’s national medical director where he was responsible for clinical leadership, quality and innovation for around 10 years, attended the conference and gave an opening speech.

He said: “One of the great things about working for the NHS is that everyone who comes to work wants to improve lives, most importantly for patients, but also for themselves and their colleagues too. The NHS is a social movement of people wanting to do good, aligned by a core set of values, and it’s true to say that the best movements and improvements are driven by a coalition of the willing. I genuinely couldn’t believe it when I heard there were 150 improvement posters being presented at Evelina London, what a brilliant achievement at what can only be described as a festival of quality improvement.”

James O’Brien, director of performance and improvement at Evelina London commented: “This time last year I said that I was looking forward to our fifth Quality Improvement Conference but this year has far surpassed even my expectations – 150 improvement posters ranging across almost every facet of care for children, young people and families is unprecedented. The people of Evelina London are an inspiration and what a credit to them to impress someone as experienced in improvement as Sir Bruce Keogh.”

Staff gave presentations on a range of recent outstanding projects and achievements including the hospital physiotherapy team who picked up the team award for their dedication to improving their service. Elspeth Will, clinical lead physiotherapist, who has worked at Evelina London for more than 20 years, explained how their team of 33 has made a difference. Core to their approach is giving everyone in the team the opportunity to contribute improvement ideas at regular meetings and sharing their learning with local and national networks.

Poster prize winners

• Improving health outcomes for looked after children
• The home monitoring programme for children who have undergone cardiac surgery
• Implementation of the Cerebral Palsy Integrated Pathway (CPIP), early detection of children with cerebral palsy who are at risk of developing contractures or hip dislocation.

Highly commended poster

• The ‘Red Hat’ pathway: reducing avoidable Neonatal Unit admissions for hypoglycaemia

Team awards

• Winner: children’s physiotherapy team
• Highly Commended: Evelina London Children’s Hospital speech and language team.