Two of our trailblazing projects have been shortlisted in the HSJ Patient Safety Awards.

Our Children’s Emergency Department (ED) have improved detection and care for children with diabetes and their families after noticing a large increase in children coming to hospital with new onset diabetes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

An alert was raised and measures put in place for early identification of children with diabetes. We also led a national study including 49 trusts to raise awareness, and developed resources to help families, improving on-going care and support for children.

Caroline Ponmani (above), Clinical Lead, Children’s ED, said:

Every member of our team showed commitment to supporting children and families at the difficult time of diabetes diagnosis.

Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) and new onset diabetes can manifest like other conditions, so differentiating these children from other sick children is not always easy. What we did initially during the pandemic was raise awareness across the board in Children’s ED and empowered people.

It has been amazing to see how people bloom when you invest in them, and this translated into fantastic patient care.

A joint project by our Maternity Quality and Safety and Bereavement teams has also been shortlisted for how they are working together to improve maternity care and reduce health inequalities.

Their project aims to transform maternity care by learning from baby deaths, working with key stakeholders to identify insights and trends, and put in place immediate actions.

This included changing our booking process when we identified a number of patients needing maternity care had not previously booked in with our team. This is vital as it enables us to gather vital medical information, without it, there can be delays in referrals and assessments. Therefore, we changed our process to ensure women attending maternity triage not on our system are booked and scanned within 72 hours.

Lily Le-Gourrierec, Safety Lead for Women’s Health, said:

It’s such a privilege for our project to be recognised at a national level.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to promote and influence better outcomes for mothers and their babies within our diverse communities.

Pictured above are members of our maternity team: (back row l-r) Celia Burrell, obstetric consultant, Lily Le-Gourrierec, Louise Broderick, specialist bereavement midwife, (front row), Louise Butler, specialist midwife for clinical quality improvement.

The awards will be held on Monday 16 September in Manchester.