A new improvement collaborative has been launched to help improve clinical outcomes for Lanarkshire patients.
While Lanarkshire has an established infection control programme, the ‘Safe in our hands HAI improvement collaborative’ aims to support staff to continue to improve their good standards.
The virtual launch event, hosted on MS Teams, saw teams from across NHS Lanarkshire coming together to commit to the continual reduction of HAI infections and improvement in hand hygiene.
Speaking at the launch event, Heather Knox, chief executive for NHS Lanarkshire, said: “Infection control is at the forefront of everyone’s mind like never before. Our efforts in controlling infection has taken on new levels of visibility.
“The main purpose for the HAI improvement collaborative is to protect our patients. It’s the main focus of everything we do.
“Our patients expect and deserve to receive the healthcare they need without any unnecessary complications. Much of the harm from healthcare associated infection is avoidable.
“This collaborative will help teams to make positive changes by understanding the problems around HAI and committing to change.”
Following the pandemic, staff across NHS Lanarkshire have learned to adapt to new changes and to work in different ways.
Staff are always looking at new ways of working to improve their own practice and the experience of their patients.
Professor Amanda Croft, chief nursing officer for Scotland, said: “The pandemic has been really hard for everyone – on both a professional and personal level.
“I would like to thank health and social care staff across Scotland. If it wasn’t for their excellent HAI work in advance of the pandemic, our infection transmission rates would have been a lot higher.
“We know that covid-19 continues to put significant pressure on health and social care services. Transmission in hospital mirrors community transmission and we need to ensure we are continuing to practice high infection control procedures to keep our patients safe.
“We have a fantastic team in Lanarkshire and across Scotland who are making sure that we implement the learnings from the pandemic in order to keep our patients and the public safe.
“This collaborative will help to ensure that IPC measures are robust in our hospitals as we recover from the pandemic.”
As part of the collaborative, teams across the organisation have been encouraged to set clear and measurable improvement goals for their HAI performance.
Professor Jason Leitch, said: “The most successful collaborative are those which are done in controlled environments. They are well led, well measured and give local ownership.
“For them to be successful, those working in the area need to be involved in what changes they would like to make. It needs local ownership of the issue.
“It can be difficult to make big changes, you need to be bold with your ideas and have courage. This collaborative encourages staff to create their own recipe of ideas for reducing HAI across Lanarkshire.
“They can persuade their colleagues to follow suit and make a real difference to patient outcomes.”
For the latest updates on the collaborative, follow @safe_inourhands on twitter.
