Heartbeat: welearn poster competition – improvements through innovation

August 20, 2019

Last year we launched welearn, laying the foundations of a Trust-wide development programme designed to encourage colleagues to share their innovations and ideas and we were overwhelmed with over 65 entries.

This year, the campaign has relaunched and colleagues are being encouraged to submit their ideas in the form of posters and be in with an opportunity to win up to £5,000 for your department.

Last year, simple ideas from developing pet therapy on wards to help patients relax and recuperate to reviewing clinical guidance on to encourage fluid intake to improve perioperative recovery were amongst some of the highest scoring ideas.

Leading on the welearn programme is Kam Dhami, Director of Governance, she said: “We know our colleagues are always working hard to innovate their services and improve the experience of patients, what we are hoping to do with welearn is to spread those little gems of improvement that we know exist in pockets of our organisation to the whole organisation. welearn is a platform for colleagues to take their ideas and present them to senior colleagues, prove that they work and ultimately win the backing of peers, not only for the prize on offer but also for the opportunity of spreading your innovation and potentially improving the experience of patients in other specialties.

One of the projects which was well received across the organisation was ‘Rate my Day’, submitted by Clinical Lead Podiatrist, Thomas Calderbank. Rate my day focussed on developing a process to capture the opinions of colleagues as to how they felt their day had progressed and to identify issues which could potentially lead to poor patient experience. Explaining the principles of ‘Rate my day’, Thomas said: “Whilst as managers we feel we are reasonably good at identifying some of the bigger issues that affect patient experience, we found that minor issues were often going unnoticed. Rate my day gives us the ability to poll our staff on a daily basis and visualise trending issues affecting staff moral, service delivery and patient experience.”

Following on from the welearn competition, Thomas has gone on to present his idea to peers at Teamtalk as well as supporting colleagues to embed the process in to their services across the Trust.

If you would like to submit your ideas to this year’s welearn poster competition you can find templates and further information on Connect.

For more information or to discuss your ideas, please contact Preeti Puligari, Library and Knowledge Services Manager on extension 3112 or email preeti.puligari1@nhs.net.