This week’s leadership message comes from Ian Holmes, Director of Strategy and Partnerships for the ICB, and Hayden Ridsdale, a Programme Manager in the Strategy and Partnerships Directorate responsible for dentistry and oral health.

This week’s blog comes from Dasa, Laura and Nick

Hello, our names are Dáša, Laura and Nick. We are part of the Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership and we believe that we can only deliver truly joined-up working if we practice joined-up listening.

Our respective roles are in involvement, quality and within our local Healthwatch, so listening is part of the day job. There are plenty of tools and channels to tell us about people’s experiences of individual services, such as general practice, hospitals or social care, which is great. But people don’t live in silos. They experience care and support across many different services. We know – because people tell us – that a lack of coordination between different services is frustrating. Worse still, those gaps in co-ordination disproportionately affect those with the greatest needs and the poorest outcomes. So what’s in place to tell us whether our local services are working well together to meet people’s needs? Two years ago, the answer would’ve been ‘not much’. So we got to work.

We started with a blank piece of paper and mapped out our ideas for a more integrated approach to experience of care across Wakefield district. How could we bring all those voices and experiences together? What did we want it to look and feel like? Who did we need around the table?

That blank piece of paper was quickly filled with a vision of a local learning network that could step away from organisational boundaries and individual feedback mechanisms, and instead put people in the centre and focus on experience across whole pathways of care.

We are lucky to have a good track record of working together in Wakefield. We used our existing relationships to share an open invitation across the district to help build the network from the ground up. We worked with a broad range of partners to co-produce a set of aims and objectives, think about what success would look like and what we wanted the network to be, together. And so, the Wakefield District Experience of Care Network was born.

It has brought together acute and mental health trusts, public health and social care, as well as the likes of Wakefield College and VCSE organisations including Healthwatch, NOVA and the Young Lives Consortium (VCSE umbrella organisations), and our two hospices. This means that organisations that impact on the wider determinants of health, as well as health and care services, are included as part of the Network's scope. 

We meet every quarter and, informed by data about what people tell us, focus on a specific topic to analyse and share experience of care data, identify emerging challenges and themes, and hear from the strategic leads in these areas to make sure plans will improve people’s experiences. Our sessions have included people's experience of thorny issues like getting a GP appointment, being discharged from hospital and waiting for planned care. 

The Network champions the importance of working together to deliver practical solutions for what people tell us matters to them. Our session about access to GP appointments, for example, identified the need to promote the role of different professionals working in general practice and a HealthWatch ‘how to’ guide to help people prepare for an appointment was created.  

Today, our Experience of Care Network is a vibrant community of interest. It gives the health and care partnership a single shared view of experience of care for our population. It also offers valuable peer support for our members, who are often the single point of contact for experience of care in their organisation.

Almost two years on from that initial development session, our membership has grown from eight to 16 partners; we’ve seen a 12 percent increase in positive sentiment in experience of care feedback (Q1 2022/23 19% positive sentiment increased to 31% in Q1 2023/24); and we are helping to make sure that the lived experience of our population is at the forefront of the Partnership’s planning, decisions and service delivery.

The cherry on the cake was winning the ‘Strengthening the Foundation’ award at the Patient Experience Network National Awards (PENNA) in Birmingham last month.

We are really proud of what we’ve built in Wakefield and we’d love to share what we’ve learned to help colleagues to build their own thriving network and to make sure joined-up listening is embedded in joined-up working. Please do get in touch [please link to: laura.elliott23@nhs.net or dasa.farmer1@nhs.net] if you’re interested in a conversation.

All you need is a blank piece of paper, an open invitation, and people with a passion for improving experience of care.

Thank you for reading.

5,000 robotic-assisted surgical procedures celebrated at Leeds Teaching Hospitals
NHS Trust

Leeds Teaching Hospitals celebrated its milestone 5,000th case of robotic-assisted surgery using the da Vinci Surgical System this week.

Carol Stott, from Leeds, was the 5,000th patient to benefit from robotic-assisted surgery, and she was happy to help LTHT celebrate the milestone and share her story.

LTHT installed its first da Vinci system in 2005 and is now home to three of the most advanced robotic systems from Intuitive, which are used by surgeons to treat patients across eight surgical specialities in Leeds, including cancer treatment and specialist care for children.

Last year, two older robotic systems across the Trust received updates and a brand-new model was introduced to the Leeds robotic surgical suite based at St James’s University Hospital. Since then, the number of patients receiving robotic-assisted surgery for cancer treatment has more than doubled.

More patients than ever before are now benefitting from the improved clinical outcomes of robotic-assisted surgery, such as faster recovery times, reduced length of stay, fewer complications, fewer readmissions, with the need for conversion to open surgery far less likely.

​​

West Yorkshire Communication and Engagement Network

The Communication and Engagement Network met on Thursday, where over 80 colleagues came together to share learning and good practice.

Thank you to guest speakers, including Jamie Coulson from the BBC, Nick Howard, Leonora Merry, Director of Communications at The Nuffield Trust.

Carrie Rae gave an update on involving young people in the work of West Yorkshire Children and Young People Programme and there was an update on campaigns and involvement work also.

Raising awareness of urinary tract infections

New awareness campaign to help reduce hospital admissions for urinary tract infections The NHS and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) are raising awareness of urinary tract infections (UTIs), as new data shows they have led to more than 800,000 admissions to hospitals across the country over the past five years.

While UTIs are a year-round concern, ahead of what is expected to be another busy winter in the NHS, clinical leaders are reminding people – particularly those aged 65 and older, and carers – of the steps they can take to reduce their risk of getting a harmful infection. In West Yorkshire we also have five short videos to support this work including: antimicrobial (AMR) resistance, hydration, continence, catheter care and UTI diagnostics. Urdu and Romanian versions are also available. For more information about the national campaign please direct people to the NHS urinary tract infections webpage.