Award-winning projects are improving care for children, young people and women

Staff from across our hospitals and community sites came together virtually for the 8th Evelina London quality improvement conference to celebrate projects that are making our services better, faster and fairer.

60 projects were spotlighted across Evelina London services. They include work to reduce accidents with breathing tubes, implement a new system to increase the number of MRI scans in a day, and improve the monitoring of a new drug.

Posters about the improvement projects were submitted to judges before the conference and displayed in Evelina London Children's Hospital.

Winners were chosen for demonstrating 'better', 'faster' or 'fairer' care. The winning teams presented their findings at the conference to share learnings, celebrate their achievements and reflect on the importance of continuously enhancing the experiences of the babies, children, young people and women in our care.

Caroline Clarke, Regional Director for NHS London, gave the opening speech and answered attendees' questions. She spoke about her own experiences with service transformation and the key ingredients for successfully implementing improvement projects.

James O'Brien, Director of Operations and Improvement at Evelina London, said:

Incredible work is taking place every day at Evelina London to improve our services and deliver better, faster and fairer care for our patients.

"Reading the posters and hearing my colleagues speak about their projects has been absolutely inspirational. The success of the conference is a testament to the huge effort that they have made, and how deeply embedded service improvement is in the way we work. It is a pleasure to be able to highlight the fantastic developments that are being made by our teams on a daily basis."

'Better' winning project

Babies admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit often need to have respiratory support through a breathing tube. The tube can sometimes become accidentally removed, a complication called unplanned extubation. This can lead to sudden changes to bodily functions like their oxygen levels and blood pressure. Our neonatal team developed a comprehensive care bundle to raise awareness of this issue and improve training, and is on track to successfully reduce the number of unplanned extubations by 30% within a year.

'Faster' winning project

The theatres, cardiology and imaging teams worked together to develop a 'walk-in, walk-out' service for children and young people who need to have an MRI under a general anaesthetic. A pilot of the proposed new service was found to reduce the amount of time families needed to be in hospital, and double the number of scans the imaging team could do in a day. The teams are now working to develop a permanent service.

'Fairer' winning project

The cystic fibrosis team designed a fair and consistent monitoring process for young children with cystic fibrosis who are starting the new medicine elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (ETI). It aimed to make sure that none of the children would miss their follow-up tests, meaning any necessary adjustments to their treatment could be identified and made. This resulted in 1 in 5 of the children starting the new medicine being able to take a smaller dose after their follow-up tests.