Improvement Faculty services

Here at Sherwood Forest Hospitals, we aspire to a culture of continuous improvement, where everyone who sees an opportunity to improve any aspect of our services is supported to do so.

This support comes from the Improvement Faculty, a centrally located single point of contact for all.

The Improvement Faculty offers the following support to teams and colleagues:

• Guided self-help and access to training​
• Coaching​
• Advice and guidance​
• Fully co-ordinated multi professional support – projects and programmes​.

What we offer​

• We offer expertise in terms of improving capability and culture, ensuring that successes are celebrated and lessons learnt.​
• We can help evaluate new ideas and where possible provide solutions. ​
• We have an ‘open-access’ Improvement Hub, where colleagues from across the Trust can seek advice, share ideas and discuss any aspect of Improvement activity.​
• We offer programme, project, service improvement and change management expertise and support and where required a fully ‘coordinated’ package of support. This will include liaison with other Trust services (including but not limited to) the Digital Transformation Unit, Organisational Development, Research and Innovation, Library and Knowledge Services and Patient Safety and Governance.​
• We offer expert programme monitoring, evaluation and assurance, including advice and ‘hands on’ support in assessing the quality impact of projects and programmes. 

Improvement approach​

We use the Model for Improvement as our improvement methodology, it helps to make sure we take a consistent and evidence-based approach across the organisation.​

​The Model for Improvement uses a framework of three questions to help us understand the problem and identify all the possible solutions:

• What are we trying to accomplish?​
• How will we know that our change is an improvement?​
• What changes can we make that will result in the improvement we seek?​

​Having identified possible changes, the Model for Improvement uses a process of small-scale testing and learning known as the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle to find the best possible solution. ​

​Clinical audit is used alongside quality improvement to help identify the things that need to be improved. In clinical audit we check how we are doing against an agreed standard, if we are not achieving the standard we recommend using the model for improvement to understand the problem and find the best solution. Once the solution has been implemented clinical audit can be helpful to monitor that the standard is being maintained. ​

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AMaT System​

​Clinical audit and quality improvement projects should be registered on ​Audit Management and Tracking (AMaT) system.

Please note, this is only accessible to Sherwood Forest staff.

All clinical audit projects should be registered and approved on AMaT before data collection begins.​

​The Quality Improvement module on AMaT will help to guide you through your QI project, you will find many tools, templates and ‘How To’ guides in the system that you can download, complete and attach to your project. 

Our training offer​

We have a range of training to help you, the following courses can all be booked on the Sherwood e-academy (link below) search for the course title:​

• AMaT – how to use the AMaT system, there are also video tutorials in the AMaT Academy section on the system​
• Clinical Audit – an e-learning session​
• QSIR Fundamentals 1-day course – an introduction to QI, including an overview of our improvement approach, how to measure improvements and test changes, some tools to help make sure your improvements last.  ​
• Creativity in Improvement Training – a two-hour session to help you be more creative and innovative including how creativity links to the model for improvement, the Creativity Process and tools to support ideas generation.​
• Capacity and Flow Training – a two-hour session looking at the impact of queues and how they develop, understanding the difference between demand, capacity, activity and backlog and how to measure them, tools to help you balancing demand and capacity.​
• Intro to Project Management – a two-hour session to help you understand the different elements of a project, what is project management? Project documentation, milestones and project planning tools such as Gannt charts, managing risks and issues, sustainability.​
• Human Factors – a two-hour introduction to human factors, including what is meant by human factors or ergonomics, how they link to day-to-day work, some tools to help make working practices more ergonomic​

​To book onto one of our courses, visit the Sherwood e-academy​.

​In addition to the above, we can also arrange access to the:

QSIR Practitioner five-day course.

SFH run the nationally accredited QSIR Practitioner five-day course alongside our ICS partners which offers a comprehensive look inside the world of improvement and its tools.

This course is most suitable for those who will be leading improvement on a regular basis, you cannot book directly so for more information or to request a place please contact the Improvement Faculty.

For further information about the Improvement Faculty, please visit the staff intranet.