Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The aim of having an away day was to enhance relationships across three sites by improving the understanding of each other’s roles, their contributions and ways to provide mutual support. Also the intention was to establish parity through co-designing common practices of working effectively and developing quality improvement projects.

Method: Staff members from three Paediatric Diabetes Teams within the same trust were invited to attend an away day led by a leadership development specialist. To unite and focus the group, after outlining the programme of the day, staff were set a picture profiling icebreaker, where participants split into pairs to assess strengths, gaps and opportunities in the workplace. The group then reconvened to engage in a quality improvement exercise, identifying just one QI project that could be immediately implemented, with the aim of initiating a model for future collective action plans that could be introduced across the trust.

Results: From the comprehensive list of possible QI projects generated, it was mutually agreed through visual voting, that the first initiative following the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle would be to encourage all patients to upload their own Diasend data either before visiting the clinic or in the waiting room.

Other QI suggestions.

Quotations from day:

‘There was very much a feeling that we worked through our problems together and that our views were considered and taken seriously’

‘I valued the time away from clinic. I could think without being interrupted or hurried’

‘Listening to the questions and the issues that the other sites face was really helpful’

Conclusions: Focus was encouraged and distractions minimised by organising this Away Day off site. In order to facilitate group harmony and productivity, using an impartial leadership development specialist was paramount. It was clear that communication, purpose and understanding was improved between the three hospitals within a Trust. We easily came to a decision regarding which improvement project we wanted to take forward, which all three sites implemented that same week and staff are still developing this idea using the PDSA tool.