Welcome to the second QI blog that we are releasing during the coronavirus lockdown. I’m sure like us, many of you are starting to get the feeling that this is a bad dream! In the space of a few short weeks our country has become unrecognisable in many ways and since we last blogged we had the ‘clap for the NHS’ event, there have been over 1,000 deaths (including front-line medics), senior cabinet members including the PM have contracted the virus and the debate about PPE seems to rage on. Still, we must also not forget the amazing work being carried out across the NHS and beyond to fight the spread of COVID-19 and that is why we will be releasing weekly blogs.
Last week our blog focused on a number of examples with regard to how clinical audit is being used effectively in these most testing of times. Many of you will have seen the link to the work of Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre. To provide an update, ICNARC have now published more audit data in the last week that relates to 775 patients. This is simply a ‘must read’ report for all clinical audit and QI professionals and you can access the report here. We commend ICNARC and all those submitting information to this invaluable dataset.
In our last blog we also featured information on run charts that are commonly used in quality improvement projects. In a nutshell a run chart simply maps data over time and if you want to learn more by reading a short but very understandable article then we highly recommend this publication from Perla et al, available here. Inevitably at times like this it is hard to access accurate information, but for those of you wanting to compare how deaths from coronavirus compare by country, then we recommend the Financial Times, here. The charts on this website are regularly updated, include useful annotations and the ‘per country’ comparison graphs help better understand the trajectory of the illness across individual nations.
Aside from what we included in our blog last week, many of you may know that for the last few weeks we have been running weekly coronavirus themed polls in order to gain immediate feedback. On 16 March we polled audit and QI teams asking where the majority of their staff were working from. Of 32 votes cast, the results as follows: 56% working at work, 34% working at home and 10% other. Our most recent completed poll asked if people approved of the recent decision to suspend all national clinical audits. 25 twitter users voted and 100% agreed that this was the correct decision. Currently we have two polls running and you can find these via @cascleciester. These focus on 1) if you have access to WHO approved PPE kit and 2) if audit and QI teams are continuing to conduct usual duties or whether they have been redeployed. We will feature the results in next weeks blog!
In terms of a few ‘random offerings’… over the last week we have come across some interesting articles and websites that are worth taking a look at. If you want to know more about COVID-19 then we highly recommend the weekly round-up by Richard Lehman that features as part of the British Medical Journal. You can access the latest round-up here and this drills down on recent COVID-19 articles that will be particularly relevant to clinicians and healthcare professionals. We’d also point our audience to the recent HSJ editorial here, urging most managerial and administrative staff to work from home. Many clinicians (especially those self-isolating) will be looking at how they can do things differently and so may benefit from taking a look at a webinar created by the Q community and led by Professor Trish Greenhalgh on setting up effective video consultations. The webinar can be accessed here.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Carl Walker (Chairman of NQICAN) and @cwwalker10 for featuring us in the latest NQICAN blog and via the NQICAN twitter account. Many of you will know that we have been part of a small group that recently recommended changes to NQICAN internal governance and we are delighted to see the NQICAN blog back up and running at such an important time. With Carl now joined by Sarah Chessell @ChessellSarah as his General Secretary and their collective NQICAN days hugely increased from just two to a much more respectable five, we are really hoping that the blog will be updated on a regular basis as it was when first launched in 2017. Us bloggers have to stick together, especially in times like these and we very much commend you to the NQICAN blog and urge you to read it, here.
And finally, time to finish by ‘bigging up’ a few local audit and QI teams who caught our eye on Twitter. We note (as per the photo) and via @rcfallon that North West Ambulance service medicines team have been ably supported by their clinical audit team in setting up a medicines packing operation! We noted the tweet from @mrslynndolan highlighting that her Trust Board at Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHSFT, stating that ‘clinical audits are as important now as they ever were and they need to continue’! We also commend @CShort2013 for setting up a facebook group for Sherwood Forest Hospitals staff to help them keep fit and healthy! Inspired stuff!
That’s all for this week. Lots planned for the next blog so keep logging on. And if you want to write a few words and contribute then please do! Stay safe and stay at home!
STOP PRESS: so much happening at the moment on an almost hourly basis. Not read this yet, but likely to be a useful document for all those working on or facilitating QI projects. It is a guide to hibernating QI programmes, click here.
Comments