Welcome to our COVID19 week 4 blog round-up. This is entitled ‘the year of living differently’. We can’t claim that title for ourselves and have to give credit to Dr Margaret Harris (an expert from the World Healthcare Organisation). She has been doing a number of news interviews of late and we liked her phraseology. While we all might hope lockdown will be over soon, the stark reality (if you care to listen to the WHO) is that this is going to impact well into 2020 and probably into 2021. CASC are big fans of WHO and we would encourage you to look at their website, familiarise yourself with their guidance and watch their regular news updates via this link.
Once again, we kick off this blog with the amazing work being carried out by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre. The ICNARC audit of COVID-19 patients has now examined data from 3883 patients (up from 2,249 this time last week). You can find out more, here. What is more, one of the ICNARC trustees (who have thankfully recovered from coronavirus) has written a short blog detailing their personal experience. This is well worth a read and also includes invaluable links to other examples of ICU experiences from the perspectives of both patients and relatives. To all at ICNARC, we salute you for showing how NCAs can make a huge difference.
Once again it has been an interesting and exhausting week, with COVID-19 dominating all news and media. Since our last blog 7 days ago, we have seen the UK death toll jump from 7,000 to over 12,000 with some experts now predicting that the UK may become the worst hit country in Europe. PPE has taken centre-stage and a Government that played down the importance of testing and who have struggled to deliver 10,000 tests per day are now promising 100,000 tests per day by the end of the month. Data from across the world has demonstrated that some countries have been much more successful in combating COVID19, with far lower numbers of deaths per 100,000 population being reported by the likes of Germany and Austria. Tragically in the UK we have seen over 40 NHS staff lose their lives to coronavirus and that number will continue to rise. The 3-week lockdown has been extended indefinitely. While we see amazing and selfless efforts and gestures being made by so many in our community, these continue to be very scary times for us all with the reality being that there is no end in sight.
A quick word about care homes, hospices and wider social care. At the time of writing this blog, this sector appears to be firmly in the media spotlight and rightly so as they look after our most vulnerable citizens. We have learned this week that the UK daily death rates for coronavirus focuses primarily on hospitals. While that is understandable to some degree, we must have more accurate data and everyone that dies of the virus should be recorded in the national data. Interestingly, the audit community has often left care homes and hospices on the side-line. Not long ago, HQIP were promising us a national audit for care homes, but this has never come to fruition, despite the fact that 432,000 patients and residents live in care homes! While we continue to plough endless amounts of money into national audits that measure care in hospitals, maybe the COVID19 pandemic will finally make us realise how unbalanced and unequitable the current NCA programme is. This is a drum we have been banging for years and we don’t intend to stop now. Come on NHS England, HQIP and NQICAN, let’s get at least one national audit up and running for care homes. How hard is it?
At the end of our blog last week, we mentioned that we would be taking a look at online courses that audit and QI staff might find relevant. With so many staff now working from home, there is a fair chance that those of you reading this blog might be in a position to undertake an online course. If that is the case, we strongly recommend the Improvement Fundamentals course available here. This is a well-established course where learners can extend their knowledge and understanding of QI by completing four modules: QI theory, QI tools, measuring for QI and spreading QI. The next course commences on 20 April and is entirely free. By signing-up you can link in with like-minded improvement enthusiasts.
It is not widely known but HQIP have an eLearning area on their website and you can access that here. HQIP offer four e-learning modules, from ‘An introduction to QI for patient and public’ to ‘Transforming clinical audit data into quality improvements’. We also like the courses offered by the Future Learn platform. Again, if you’d like to learn more about quality improvement in healthcare, it might be worth signing up for this course, here. We are also big fans of IHI Open School, love NHS School for Change Agents and like Fab NHS Stuff (all easy to find via a quick Google search). Why not also apply to join the Q Community? Or take a look at the NQICAN YouTube account? In 2020, there are so many great online resources to access that can help extend your learning.
On a final note, we wanted to end this blog by pointing you towards a resource that we hope you might like and that is the Twitter account of Dr Andy Cope. We have worked with Andy for many years and his team at the Art of Being Brilliant. Since the lockdown, Andy has been running #brilliantoclock every day! With so much brilliant work being done out there by audit and QI teams (and the wider healthcare family in general) we thought it was worth a mention. Do take a look via @beingbrilliant or here.
Back next week. Stay safe everyone!