Safety success at 2013 Healthcare Quality Improvement Awards

Thursday 14 March 2013


Falls team

The ‘Sustained Improvement’ award at the 2013 Healthcare Quality Improvement Awards was presented to Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust last month. Picking up first place for reducing falls with harm, this is recognition of the team’s huge achievements and best practice over the past few years.

Falls remain one of the most common causes of harm in the hospital above serious pressure ulcers and Clostridium Difficile.

At Guy’s and St Thomas’ we have a bid to make sustainable improvements for our patients so we halved the number of falls with harm from a monthly average of 7.3 back in 2009 to 2.5 last year. 

Heidi Jensen, Head of Nursing for acute medicine said: "The Falls group are absolutely delighted to have won this award after dedicating ourselves to improving the management of falls within the Trust. This was a whole inpatient team effort. We will not be complacent however - and we will be working closely with the Demantia and Delirium (DaD) team to continue to improve staff knowledge."

Not stopping there, competing against 33 entries, the team were also short listed in the ‘Patient Safety’ category.

Steve Walters, Clinical Governance Manager, said: "Seeing best practice celebrated in this way shows the commitment of the Trust to ensuring that we continue to monitor and take action to ensure those improvements are sustained; including taking further actions when necessary. This award and nominations are both well deserved."

Last updated: March 2022

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