Quality Improvement Zone

The Golden Jubilee National Hospital has approximately 230 patient beds. It is a centre of excellence in Orthopaedics and home to Regional and National Heart and Lung Services with one of the largest elective Orthopaedic Centres in Europe and the...

Patients that attend the homeless practice can have a chaotic lifestyle and require input from a range of members from the multi-disciplinary team which includes psychiatry, alcohol partnerships, and social work. Patients with substance misuse...

Patients admitted to the Vascular Service represent some of the most co morbid and physiologically vulnerable in an acute hospital. They, in particular, are at extreme risk from adverse events, and stand to benefit greatly from interventions,...

Use of peripheral venous catheter (PVC) involves a risk of localized infections of the skin and generalized infections as bacteraemia and septicemia in the spread of microbes from the catheter into the bloodstream. These complications results in...

All neonates born after gestational week 37 that are admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Stavanger University Hospital, Norway, with suspected Early onset Sepsis (start of antibiotic before 72 hours of age) are clinically evaluated by...

Cameron Community Hospital provides recovery and adaptation following acute illness. Many of these patients are frail, elderly patients with comorbidity and complex care needs. The hospital does not have acute care or on site diagnostics and thus...

Aim: 50% reduction in cardiac arrests in Wishaw General Hospital’s AMU by June 2016 by improving the recognition of, and response to, hypoxic patients. Cardiac arrests are often preceded by 8-12 hours of physiological deterioration, detectable by...

In Forth Valley, one of the strategies to help meet national cancer targets(1) is to bring patients referred with suspected colorectal cancer “direct to test” with colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy. To meet the demand on endoscopic services,...

Stroke has been described as an “earthquake in the brain” with the shockwaves leaving a deep impact on how people move, communicate, feel or understand their world (1). The top indicators for quality stroke care include admission to a stroke unit,...

Dispensing practices are essential in the supply of medicines in remote and rural areas. However, dispensing practice staff are not empowered or trained to provide medicines safety advice to patients when they collect medicines. This means...

Each of the clinical centres at Rigshospitalet is involved in the treatment of cancer patients. Cancer patients in Denmark are treated according to clinical pathways called cancer packages where the different steps in diagnosis and treatment are...

Chemotherapy treatment (also known as Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy or SACT) is high risk with mortality within 30-days of treatment ranging from <1->10% depending on the patient population treated, with higher mortality in less fit patients...

Family-centred care places parents and families at the centre of a baby’s neonatal care. It leads to healthier babies and happier families. Communication between staff and parents is a key component of family-centred care and a national neonatal...

Appropriate insertion and management of medical devices contributes to potentially avoidable health care associated infections (HCAIs). National data from a point prevalence survey in Irish hospitals reports that 13% of HCAIs are bloodstream...

60 – 80 % of patients medicine lists controlled after admission contains one or more unintended discrepancy. With so many errors, the chance of harming patient is high.By implementing a structured way to collect information of patients medicines...

Sepsis is associated with high morbidity and mortality. In the UK and Ireland there are many thousands of deaths attributed to sepsis. Early recognition and management of sepsis has led to a decrease in both mortality and length of hospital stay....

Response to Complaints is a key indicator of the quality of a service or organisation. Complaints should be responded to in a timely manner, address the patients concerns, establish a causal factor and generate relevant actions and improvement...

Edinburgh’s Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) Primary Care Centre (PCC) sees people as directed by NHS24 telephone triage from 1800 to midnight Monday to Friday and from 0800 to midnight at the weekends. Discharge by midnight allows people (both...

Aim: 95% of patients will be triaged in accordance with current guidelines by the Emergency Department nurses at Wishaw General Hospital by June 2016. Triage is key to delivering the right care at the right time for patients attending an Emergency...

Delivering high quality care in General Adult Psychiatry requires a coordinated approach from a multidisciplinary team (MDT). Weekly ward rounds are an important forum for reviewing a patient’s progress and developing a personalised care plan for...

Staff wellness is an important focus for our department, not least because we know a happy, healthy, fulfilled workforce provide better care. Caring for acutely unwell and injured children is a uniquely stressful event in the ED. Staff reported...

Rationale - Emergency laparotomy is a procedure that carries with it a great deal of morbidity and mortality, higher than many other procedures considered to be high-risk, such as coronary artery bypass grafting or abdominal aortic aneurysm...

Handover has been identified by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) as being ‘a preventable cause of harm’1. The risks associated with handover include information not being handed over or misunderstood2 which may lead to serious breakdowns in...

Category A calls are deemed as the Scottish Ambulance Service’s highest priority of call, identifying patients with potentially life threatening or time critical injury or illness. In order to manage patient safety and risk, it has been identified...

Older people living in Care Homes are 3 times more likely than their community dwelling peers to fall and 10 times more likely to sustain a serious injury as a result 1. The multifactorial nature of falls dictates the need for a person centred...

Improving patient flow, reducing Average Length of stay and readmissions to hospital are key objective of the HSE, National Acute Medicine Programme, and Department of Health. Devolving discharge to competent members of the Multidisciplinary team...

Each year 15,000 people in Scotland experience a stroke making it is the leading cause of adult disability.1 The management of patients with stroke is informed by large scale research studies and there is strong evidence to support the use of...

“Safety” is a key dimension of the Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHS Scotland [1]. One aspect of patient safety is adverse event (AE) management. “Learning from adverse events through reporting and review: A national framework for Scotland” [2],...

The majority of adverse incidents in theatre are associated with human factor (HF) issues, including communication and team working . Redesign of processes; using briefs, pauses and cognitive aids and HF based team training have been shown to...