A member of staff at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been recognised for the improvements that she has made to patient flow.Sarah McMullan, Senior Sister for the Critical Care Unit at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals has been named as a finalist for the Sarah Brookfield award from the Critical Care Network for leading the implementation of a vast range of projects to improve patient flow in the Critical Care Unit at Royal Preston Hospital.
Sarah’s work has centred on improving discharge times and patient flow in the department to improve patient experience when in hospital. The critical care team have introduced several processes such as standardised procedures for patient flow to improve efficiency, introduction of a red flag system to improve awareness of capacity levels across the hospital, implementation of weekly multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings, and a system to predict triggers for high occupancy rates earlier.
Sarah said: “We have been working on these projects for 12 months now. This has been a huge team effort to make sure that everything has been implemented properly and effectively. We have implemented all of these procedures into our daily routines, so they have become really well embedded into everything that we do, which has made a big difference to the quality and timeliness of our discharges. I’m really proud to be a finalist for this award, and am proud of everything that we have done over the last 12 months, as a team, to improve the way that we work on the department. These projects have had a really positive impact on patients and on the team, and this recognition has made all of this hard work worthwhile.”