Two members of staff at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have been awarded with a local hero award for the work that they have done to improve care within our communities.
The 2BR Local Hero Awards celebrate the brilliant and inspirational people of Lancashire. Winners were announced last night at an awards ceremony in Burnley.
Tracy Earley, Consultant Nurse for Nutrition at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, was crowned the winner of the brand new category of NHS Superstar for her work to improve education and training around the correct insertion of nasogastric feeding tubes.
Nasogastric tubes (NGTs) are small feeding tubes which are used for short or medium term nutritional support. Notably, Tracy has introduced an e-learning tool to improve knowledge of the placement of these tubes, which has been adopted nationally.
Tracy and her team have developed a whole systems approach to improving safety with the use of nasogastric tubes. The e-learning tool reinforces the correct way to insert and confirm the position of nasogastric tubes. This work has been shared as a free resource which a large number of other NHS organisations are now using. Health Education England has also adopted it as a national programme of education.
Tracy said: “I am so pleased to have won this award! We have all worked really hard to improve patient safety and the commitment to driving this from the whole team has been simply amazing. We are delighted with the improvements that the resources can make to patient safety. We really are leading the way in education and improved safety for our staff and for others too with tools like these. The e-learning tool has been so well received that several other hospitals have adopted the use of the e-learning tool which is amazing to see.”
Alison Brindle, Registered Midwife at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, won the #Hero Award for creating and implementing the nationally recognised social media campaign – the #theatrecapchallenge.
The theatre cap challenge is a social media campaign promoting the idea of writing your name and job title on your theatre cap in order to improve recognition and personalisation of care in theatres. Alison came up with this idea and was the first person to add her name and role to her own theatre cap.
Alison then decided to take this initiative more widely and created a hashtag #theatrecapchallenge to share on social media to encourage more staff to participate. A huge amount of people began to get involved with the campaign, including an anaesthetist from Australia who wanted to implement a similar campaign to improve patient safety through easier identification of colleagues.
Alison said: “The campaign started through discussions about humanising care and giving women and their partners or families a better birthing experience, which is really important to us at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. Emma Gornall, our Delivery Suite Ward Manager and I spoke about how everyone in theatres looks the same, and it is hard for patients to identify us despite having had conversations previously. Being able to recognise someone when you’re in a theatre can make you feel a little more comfortable and feel that you can put your trust into someone. It also makes the patient aware of what each person is responsible for as they have their job role on their cap too.”
“The campaign went viral very quickly and the initiative is now being used in NHS hospitals throughout the UK, and beyond. I am so pleased that this idea has been so well received and that we are able to improve experiences for our patients in theatres in this way. I am so thankful to have won the #Hero award and hope that this will create even more awareness of the campaign.”