Patient Safety Awards 2016: Changing Culture to Improve Patient Safety

Winner: Essex County Council

Quality improvement and culture change is hard enough in a single organisation. How much harder when it’s a county council trying to drive QI in care homes?

There was also evidence of a lasting culture change, for example with managers more likely to describe improvement has a team effort than a solo achievement

Yet this is what Essex County Council, in partnership with UCL Partners and local health partners and funding from the Health Foundation, has achieved with the PROSPER programme.

PROSPER (Promoting Safer Provision of care for Elderly Residents) delivered QI education and training to care home staff. In turn, they achieved a 12.6 per cent reduction in falls and a 24.5 per cent reduction in pressure ulcers.

There was also evidence of a lasting culture change, for example with managers more likely to describe improvement has a team effort than a solo achievement.

The judges said: “There was an authentic approach taken to the project, which is visibly improving the lives of their patients. This is gold standard with huge potential for impact across the country.”

Highly commended: Weston General Hospital