NHS Evidence supports you in your drive to deliver quality

The challenge for the NHS is how to improve care in tough economic times, and show that money is being spent wisely and to best effect, with the best possible outcomes.

The quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) collection on NHS Evidence (www.evidence.nhs.uk/QIPP) provides quality-assured, real-life examples of how things can be done differently in the NHS, while providing optimal care. As a busy frontline professional, you know delivering efficiencies is not something that can wait until tomorrow - it requires focus, drive and innovation now. So it’s good news that your colleagues across the country are taking ownership of the quality agenda, challenging the way things have always been done and provoking thoughts, ideas and discussions about how changes can be made.

Take the Productive Mental Health Ward - a modular-based, self-directed quality-improvement programme to teach staff how to assess and redesign the way they work. It focuses on very simple ideas, such as altering patient handover time, reorganising storage facilities and providing a systematic approach to improving the reliability, safety and efficiency of care delivered. By working their way through the handover module, staff on the Jade Ward at Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire cut handover times from 40 to 20 minutes, releasing around six additional hours a week to spend on patient care.

Nursing staff are not just implementing quality and productivity initiatives - they are designing them from scratch. A secondment pilot rolled out by nurses at Berkshire East Community Health Service has boosted confidence and competency levels in delivering care at the end of life. Rolled out in just six weeks, the project enabled 20 nurses from St Marks and Upton Community Hospitals to do one-week placements at the local hospice. They worked with multidisciplinary staff to share skills and address areas in which they lacked confidence, such as symptom management and using the Liverpool Care Pathway. As a result, more than 90% of staff were more confident in delivering end-of-life care.

The key vision for the NHS is to achieve quality outcomes that are among the best in the world. You need to know which guidance will help you deliver the highest standards of care - the NHS Evidence Accreditation Scheme rigorously assesses the processes used to produce guidance. Some 30 organisations have been, or are going, through it and plans are under way to expand its scope to include commissioning and social care information.

From May we will broaden the information available and signpost more clearly. New specialised content includes a focus on medicines information; you will be able to search key sources (such as the British National Formulary and the National Prescribing Centre) simultaneously to access information pertinent to your practice. NHS Evidence will also continue to support you in local decision making by providing access to National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence pathways so you can browse associated NICE products online. As quality standards will be sourced from evidence accredited by us, you know the information is trustworthy.

NHS Evidence has been available for almost two years; 80% of users believe it helps them find the most up-to-date information and more than 90 per cent believe the information accessed is robust.

With NHS care changing so rapidly and NHS Evidence giving access to more than 250,000 information resources of high-quality health and social care, it can help you to meet your needs.

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