Sheffield Teaching Hospitals scoops award for patient safety
Specialist Inpatient Nurse Clare Nelson and Honorary Consultant Diabetologist Dr Dinesh Selvarajah of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust collect the award.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has won a prestigious national award for its efforts in enhancing patient safety.
The Trust’s work in improving the safety of patients with diabetes won the category of Best Improvement in Quality and Safety at the British Medical Journal’s (BMJ) Group Awards, recognising it as an example of best practice that is significant in patient safety across the country.
Diabetes is one of the most common diseases in the UK, with 2.6 million current sufferers – a figure that is expected to rise by 50% in the next decade. The Trust has been running a highly effective project to help prevent errors in the management of diabetes patients whilst in hospital and to improve patient outcomes and experiences.
The Trust brought together a team of patients, nurses, doctors and managers, supported by the wider diabetes unit, to look at the ways in which the management of diabetes can go wrong, for example through errors in insulin and blood glucose (sugar) monitoring.
The team, led by clinicians Dr Fionuala Creagh, Dr Dinesh Selvarajah and specialist inpatient diabetes nurses Clare Nelson, Cathie Stocks, Kath Hudson and Chloe Nisbet, then created a number of ‘care bundles’. These were sets of tasks representing best practice in patient care, which were implemented on selected wards. These brought in new ways of working including a diabetes education programme for staff and ‘Hypoboxes’ – colourful, permanent boxes where staff can find guidance and equipment to treat hypoglycaemia (when a patient’s glucose levels drop below normal levels).
Improvements in patient safety included a reduction 28.2% reduction in hypoglycaemic episodes in patients with diabetes. The diabetes team now plans to roll the project out to more wards to build on the success, helping to ensure an even higher quality of diabetes management and patient care and safety across the Trust.
Dr Dinesh Selvarajah, Honorary Consultant Diabetologist, said: “We are truly delighted to have won this award and this represents a lot of hard work on behalf of a large team.
“Up to one in five hospital patients have diabetes, and so it is essential that we have all the right processes in place to manage the disease, whether it is the primary reason someone is in hospital or not.
“We identified areas in which we could make improvements in the care of people with diabetes and worked quickly to find ways in which we could make our hospitals even safer for our diabetic patients with better clinical outcomes.”
Dr Des Breen, Associate Medical Director, leads on patient safety within the Trust. He said: “The diabetes work stream is one of several groups working to continually enhance patient safety throughout the Trust. The team thoroughly deserves this award.”
The team received its award at a ceremony in London on 18th May.
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Notes to editors
The annual BMJ Group Awards recognise individuals, organisations and initiatives that have demonstrated outstanding contributions to healthcare. For more information see here.
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