Stroke, heart attacks and sepsis - what we're looking at this year

Director of Nursing and Clinical Quality and Deputy CEO Sandy Brown talks us through our clinical priorities…

Every year we produce a Quality Account that sets out the clinical issues we think are really important for all of us to focus on for the coming year.

We do this because we need to make sure we’re providing the best for our patients. The work that goes into this report is year-round to help maintain the focus on clinical quality, and we can’t underestimate the challenges that lie within it.

Earlier in the year we asked for your input on what we should look at, and together chose seven clinical areas for the year:

• Stroke care: we want to reduce the time on scene for patients we know are having a stroke so they get to a stroke centre within 60 minutes of their call, and make sure we’re delivering the full stroke care bundle 95% of the time.
• Heart attack care: here we’re aiming to get 95% of PPCI patients to a centre within 150 minutes of their call, and get every part of the STEMI care-bundle completed 80% of the time (we’re already very good at this, so keep up the good work).
• Sepsis care: we want to continue to increase the recognition of sepsis to 90% of cases, and make sure we’re delivering a high-quality care bundle for each sepsis patient.

• Frequent callers: doing our bit in putting care plans in place for those patients who call 999 regularly, whether that be daily or multiple times in a month.
• Cardiac arrest care: making this high quality so we see the number of patients with a ROSC, and ultimately the number of patients who survive and leave hospital, increase.
• The friends and family test: This is about learning from the experiences of our patients. If you aren’t aware of the friends and family test and what it’s all about, you can read more here.
• Timely responses: making sure we get to people in appropriate time, dependant on their condition.

I see clinical excellence in this organisation every day, with staff who consistently put high-quality care at the very heart of their work; if we get these seven areas right, we are doing the right thing for those patients – something we should all strive for every day.

Sandy Brown, Director of Nursing & Clinical Quality and Deputy CEO

You can download a full copy of the Quality Account here.

Published 20th August, 2015