Heartbeat: Managing safety huddles in medicine

July 13, 2021

A total of eight wards are now taking part in daily safety huddles within medicine and emergency care.

The journey first started on D15 and D17 in April this year, and just two months down the line eight wards are now involved with daily huddles taking place with the multidisciplinary team in attendance.

Since incorporating safety huddles to support effective communication at key points in the care of patients, significant improvements have been made.

Heartbeat caught up with Jo Thomas, Patient Safety Specialist for Medicine who told us: “The team within the group have completely embraced safety huddles and we are delighted with the progress we have made in just a little over two months.

“The compliance for example on D11 has been sensational. Nearly every indicator is on the up constantly or maintaining/ surpassing the Trust target.

“Brand new multidisciplinary partnerships have been established between the wards, pharmacy and the therapy team; leading to great collaboration.”

Group Deputy Director of Nursing, Debi Fretwell added: “Safety huddles have enabled us to concentrate on daily areas of concern at ward level. This means ward multidisciplinary team meetings are in control of working closely together to highlight, focus as a team and make changes. The dashboard has been helpful in giving us data that we can all see and decide which area to focus on.

“In rolling out the huddles, we have focussed on some key areas to try and make safety huddles meaningful to wards with clear roles which have supported the wards with project team support and patient safety specialist direction and focus which we are grateful for. The principles we have used have included a roll out speciality by speciality with buddies, good support framework, a project group that is representative of all disciplines and lots of energy!

“Our next step – How to share learning, capture improvements and sustainability.”