West Middlesex University Hospital shortlisted for prestigious HSJ Award

Staff at West Middlesex University Hospital are celebrating this week after being shortlisted in the Patient Safety category of the 2015 Health Service Journal (HSJ) Awards for their HEADS-UP programme.

Designed in collaboration with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, HEADS-UP is a structured quality and safety briefing which was first rolled out across some of West Middlesex’s medical wards in December 2013 to improve patient care and staff experience. Prompting teams to discuss and record the challenges of the previous day, HEADS-UP creates a forum where staff are focused on problem solving, regardless of whether the issues would ordinarily have triggered an incident report. The discussion identifies opportunities to immediately address concerns, and records problems which need more detailed input from other departments.

Programme lead, Dr Sam Pannick explains: “We know that incident reporting is valuable, but organisations need more than one way to properly detect harm or near misses. HEADS-UP was designed to get a better idea of what staff see every day, the things that frustrate frontline teams and put patients at risk. HEADS-UP is a more proactive way of thinking about patient safety on the ward environment; teams identify the problems they need to address before any patient comes to harm.”

HEADS-UP was one of 1600 entries from over 600 unique organisations, and to be shortlisted is another fantastic achievement for the programme. This year alone it has also received a ‘highly commended’ award at Health Education North West London’s (HENWL) educational excellence awards, as well as recognition from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in their March report on the hospital, who described it as “innovative” and “outstanding practice”.

The HSJ Awards is the largest celebration of excellence in UK healthcare, highlighting the most innovative and successful people and projects in the sector.

On being shortlisted, Dr Pannick commented: “Being shortlisted for this national award is a credit to West Middlesex staff, who have prioritised safe patient care even when their services are under immense pressure. The focus on our programme will help us keep making the case to invest in safe, high quality care.”