Core dimension 4 - Service Improvement | Turas

Core dimension 4 - Service Improvement

Core dimension 4 - Service Improvement

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Service improvement involves individual staff, work teams and organisations looking at how making changes to the way they work can help improve patient care by making services better - how many times have you felt frustrated or concerned that the service you provide is not as good as you think it could be? All staff have a responsibility to offer suggestions for making services better for patients.

Service improvement

Core dimension 4 is about how you can make improvements to the services you provide by making changes to your own practice or helping other staff to make changes to theirs. The service might be directly related to patients and their care or it might be a service that supports the smooth running of the organisation.

Think about:

What areas of your job that you could change to be more effective - for example:

could you change the order in which you do things to be more efficient?
could your work area be tidier and more organised so that key pieces of equipment/suppliers are easier to find or closer to hand?

What opportunities you have to discuss with your manager, team and patients how your service could be improved.

How might you get feedback from patients or service users about your service? What would you need to do to act on the feedback?

What improvement methods could you use in your job?

For reviewers and managers

If you are responsible for managing other staff:

How can you encourage staff to make suggestions for improvements and create a supportive environment for improvement?
- what actions would you take to make any changes?
- what might be the causes of resistance to change and how would you address these?
How could you make sure that your team provides person centred, safe and effective care consistently?
- what monitoring or audit might be needed?
- how can you get feedback on your service from patients and their families?
How will you support staff to make sure services continue to improve over time?
- what improvement tools and techniques do you need to use?
- where would you find information on these?
- who else would you involve?
What steps will you take to ensure that patients, families and colleagues are involved in identifying the need for improvement and taking forward any improvement ideas?

Remember

The changes might be on a small scale in one team or department or may contribute to a much larger organisation wide improvement programme.

Next: Core Dimension 5 - Quality