NHS staff in the East Midlands carry on the work of the founder of modern nursing by searching for ways to improve patient care.
Friday marked the 100th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death. Florence pioneered nursing innovation in the 19th century, championing the fundamentals of good practice in nursing, including hand-washing and improvements in the standards of equipment.
NHS East Midlands has been encouraging staff to follow in Florence’s footsteps with initiatives like the East Midlands Innovation Fund and now two organisations in the region have been highlighted for some of their innovative work.
The projects of staff at Kettering General Hospital and Leicester City Community Health Services have been included in a directory called the Essential Collection - created by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The directory contains examples of care which is high quality and cost effective and therefore, if adopted across the NHS, could make a transformational change.
Staff at Kettering General Hospital are featured for their work to promote normal childbirth and reduce the Caesarean section rate. They used an awareness campaign to provide mothers with materials which give them a more informed choice. One of the strands of the campaign also included staff spending time with mothers who had previously given birth by Caesarean section. They were able to highlight the rationale for normal birth and provide advice about the mother’s choices for their next pregnancy. The results of this intervention have been that in 2009 around 2 per cent fewer mothers underwent a caesarean section when one was not medically required and subsequently spent less time recovering in hospital after giving birth. The trust was also recognised for their work around preventing pressure ulcers and moisture lesions.
Also highlighted is Leicester City Community Health Services project to reduce staff sickness absence and thereby improving the provision of patient care. The organisation has initiated a project to improve the health and wellbeing of all staff. A survey was devised with staff consultation and found that rewarding staff and giving them recognition were the most important factors for reducing staff sickness, that inter-colleague relationships were critical for health and that support from line managers helped decrease sickness absence. The findings were then used to form a comprehensive programme designed to improve health and wellbeing among staff, including looking at management responsibility. The programme has resulted in the organisation achieving a below average absence rate of around 4 per cent.
Professor Rachel Munton, Interim Director of Nursing for NHS East Midlands said: “'Florence Nightingale was a pioneer for nursing and these innovative projects show that her work lives on, translated through the hard work of NHS staff today.
“These East Midlands projects look at how high quality, effective care can be delivered in an efficient way and we are delighted that the projects have been recognised nationally so that they can be shared with health organisations across the country to help improve patient care.”
