NNUH team shortlisted for national award
A team that provides critical care outreach across the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) has been shortlisted for a national patient safety award.
The Recognise and Respond Team (RRT) expanded and enhanced Critical Care Outreach, moving from 12 hours a day to a 24/7service last year. They have been shortlisted for The Deteriorating Patients and Rapid Response Initiative of the Year award at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2022.
The RRT work across inpatient wards responding to acutely deteriorating patients, attend resuscitation calls in the hospital as well as delivering education, training and quality improvement projects.
Their award entry on “Optimising Care, Supporting Excellence” highlights how they have supported an improvement in patient care and safety by reaching our fast-deteriorating patients 24/7 and ensuring that their colleagues on the wards are well supported and well trained. They lead in the education and training of Trust staff in the assessment and management of acutely unwell patients, providing basic, intermediate and advanced resuscitation courses and bespoke acute deteriorating patient courses for medical students, doctors, nurses, midwives and HCAs.
There are three areas of the Recognise and Respond Team:
- Response
- Quality Assurance & Education
- Resuscitation
Launched in June 2021, the team will attend the Health and Service Journal national awards at the Patient Safety Congress in September. Since the new service started, referrals to the RRT increased by 172% with three-quarters of calls responded to within 15 minutes. Deteriorating patient education delivery has also gone up by 50%.
Katie Heathcote, Recognise and Respond Team Matron, said: “The launch of the expanded service has gone above expectations and the feedback we have received from the wards has been fantastic. When you are really poorly in hospital it is a scary prospect and we hope we have made a big difference to the patient experience. We have had some lovely patient feedback. There has been a lot of change over the last year and the team have been incredible. We have embedded our team and our way of working and the next step will be to do more quality improvement projects focusing on patient deterioration and the escalation of deteriorating patients.”
“The main thing is that staff are able pick up patient deterioration earlier and use the tools we have given them through education to prevent further deterioration and reduce admissions to critical care.”