Quality and Improvement conference 2024
23 May – County Hall, London
About the conference
This year, we held our first joint Quality and Improvement conference, marking the return of our lead quality event to face-to-face format since 2019. The conference brought together industry leaders, innovators, and experts to reshape the future of healthcare delivery.
Our theme, 'North Star', directed our focus towards embedding quality and improvement seamlessly into patient care. With a gathering of trust leaders from diverse sectors, we explored how ongoing service pressures impact the quality of care.
Key Discussion Points
- Uniting national vision with local innovation.
- Elevating quality: boosting efficiency, workforce well-being, and patient outcomes.
- Balancing acts: sustainability vs. immediate gains.
- Strategies for integrating quality of care and improvement in every conversation.
- The context of NHS IMPACT reinforcing the principles that underpin a systematic approach to continuous improvement.
See resources from the conference here.
Programme
09.30
Registration and networking
10.00
Welcome
Welcome
10.10
Plenary one
Playing to our strengths: managing risk under pressure
How can a leadership focus on learning, improvement, risk management and shared endeavour support a culture of patient safety? The NHS is working under substantial pressure, with rising demand, significant workforce gaps and limited resources, creating a challenge in how it can provide consistently safe, high-quality care. This session explored some of the adaptive strategies that clinical teams and trusts can adopt as they seek to navigate this difficult landscape, manage risk and keep quality of care as their north star.
Chairs
Dr Vivek Patil
Speaker
Professor Charles Vincent
10.50
Plenary two
Addressing spirals of silence and assuring freedom to speak up, from ward to board and beyond
Recent high-profile cases of failures in quality of care have raised a number of questions related to working cultures within the NHS. How can we create a culture of openness where staff feel confident in speaking up, where boards feel confident in how they are listening and problem sensing? How can we create a culture of openness across systems and nationally, where risks and issues are explored collaboratively and met with support?
11.30
Break
12.00
Breakout sessions 1
Deploying improvement approaches at pace
While it takes time to build improvement capability and experience, and to embed complex interventions, it is still possible to deploy improvement approaches at pace. This session brought together board members with experience of putting in place structures and support that have allowed their organisations to deploy individuals with improvement skills or improvement teams when sudden unexpected challenge arose to share their reflections and learning.
Chair
Sir Julian Hartley
Identifying and calibrating organisational risk
How would your trust know something was wrong? How sensitive is your board to picking up and acting on the signals coming from its own service delivery and from local communities and partners? Where do biases and blind spots exist, and how can these be addressed? This session gave attendees the opportunity to consider how their view of risk is formed, and discuss practical ways of sensing quality and safety risks at board level.
Closing the gap: practical steps in addressing racial discrimination
Workforce diversity is essential for the delivery of high-quality care to all patients, many of whom are also from diverse backgrounds. This session supported trust leaders to better understand the existing disparity in the treatment of ethnic minority staff, providing insights and practical advice from those who have implemented strategies to improve the experience of ethnic minority staff and address structural racism and discrimination.
Chair
Saffron Cordery
Speakers
Andrew Davidson
Ashi Williams
Janine La Rosa
Dr Mamta Shetty Vaidya
Nicky Littler
Shawnna Gleeson
Speakers
Fareeha Usman BEM
13.00
Lunch
14.00
Plenary three
Capturing the benefits and articulating the value of improvements
Despite the pressures, trusts continue to prioritise a focus on quality improvement and trust-wide improvement programmes, moving towards the cultures and conditions for continuous improvement to deliver better care for patients and better outcomes for communities. How do we capture the benefits of this improvement work in giving time back to care and financial cost savings? How does this support efforts to sustain progress? This session explored findings from a recent research project, with actionable insights for board members, and reflections from colleagues on their experience applying these in practice.
Chair
Sir Julian Hartley
14.50
Breakout sessions 2
Working together to build a safety culture
Culture has a profound impact on safety and is a key component safety management systems. This session explored the connection between the board and the ward through a safety culture lens. Is trust governance fit for purpose in enabling clinical learning and patient safety? How are trusts actively enabling learning cultures? Are we creative and curious enough in the design, running and oversight of services? What successes have we seen in improving patient safety, and what are the opportunities for trusts to go further?
Chair
Ranjit Kirton
Evidence-empowered decision making
An evidence-based system harnesses the power of research in designing more effective organisations, improving services, and achieving better outcomes. This session began with colleagues sharing their experiences of the drivers and enablers of evidence-based approaches before moving to a facilitated table discussions to support peers in learning from each other.
Learning from others and each other
In this session, speakers will bring a range of examples to discuss how collaboration – and collaboration in a variety of forms – has supported and enhanced their work. We will then move to facilitated table discussions to support peers in learning from each other.
Chair
Dr Henrietta Hughes
15.50
Showcase reception and networking
16.30
Conference close
Speakers
Andrew Davidson
Head of Employment, Hempsons
Andrew has a national reputation for his work in handling concerns about doctors (under the MHPS framework), dealing with discrimination issues, employment tribunal claims and TUPE in particular and he has considerable expertise across healthcare employment law. He regularly provides training for clients on a wide range of employment law and HR issues and is a regular speaker at national conferences.
Ashi Williams
Chief People Officer, Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Ben Tipney
Founder and Managing Director, MedLed
Ben has worked extensively with NHS trusts across the UK, independent providers and the Academic Health Science Networks. He is regularly asked to speak at national healthcare conferences, and been published in ‘The Ergonomist’ – the publication of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors - as well as in the Health Service Journal. He co-authored the MedLed White Paper on Human Factors For Healthcare, a critique on the application of Human Factors and safety science in the healthcare sector.
Bethany Carter
National Lead for Guardian Support and Policy, National Guardians Office
In November 2023 Bethany took up her current position at the National Guardians Office as national lead for guardian support and policy, leading the guardian support and policy team in providing guidance and support to Freedom to Speak Up guardians across England including the development and implementation of training, guidance, and co-branded initiatives with partner organisations and stakeholders.
Professor Carrie Newlands
Consultant Surgeon, Working Party on Sexual Misconduct in Surgery at University of Surrey School of Medicine
Dr Cat Chatfield
Director, HSR UK
Cat's previous roles have included quality improvement editor for The BMJ, clinical lead for BMJ Quality, and the International Forum for Quality and Safety in Healthcare’s International Steering Committee. Cat is also editor in chief of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Journals Library and used to practice as a GP.
Charles Kwaku-Odoi
Chief Executive Officer, Caribbean & African Health Network
Charles has board roles including the NHS Race and Health Observatory; Manchester Foundation Trust Council of Governors; and Government SAGE Ethnicity Subgroup. He was named in the Health Service Journal 50 most influential Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people in health in the UK in 2022 and 2023.
Charles is a great advocate for equity and fairness across a range of important health and wellbeing issues for people of the Caribbean and African Diaspora. He is involved in work that influences the research, policy, and practice at regional and national levels. His special interest includes civic and democratic participation, blood & organ donation HIV, domestic violence, modern slavery and hate crime. Reading, walking, and football are his hobbies.
Professor Charles Vincent
Professor of Psychology at University of Oxford, Emeritus Professor Clinical Safety Research at Imperial College London and Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College Oxford
From 1999 to 2003 he was a commissioner on the UK Commission for Health Improvement and has advised on patient safety in many inquiries and committees including the recent Berwick Review. In 2007 he was appointed director of the National Institute of Health Research Centre for Patient Safety & Service Quality at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Emeritus National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator. In 2014 he took up a new most as Health Foundation professorial fellow in the Department of Psychology, University of Oxford where he continues his work on safety in healthcare and led the Oxford Region NHS Patient Safety Collaborative and was Director of Oxford Healthcare Improvement.
Dr Chike (Ify) Okocha
Chief Executive Officer, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
He has received commendations and won many national awards for the high-quality care clinical teams working for him deliver. These include: the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care and Low Secure Units (NAPICU) Team of the Year award; the Care Services Improvement Partnership 'Positive Practice' award; commendation by Hospital Doctors Award Committee; award of the British Association of Medical Managers and the Royal College of Psychiatrist Medical Manager/Leader of the Year (2009). He is on the Roll of Honour of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
His previous position with the trust was as medical director and deputy chief executive, and before that was clinical director of Greenwich, where he demonstrated excellent leadership and management skills through his development of high-quality clinical service, innovative service developments and the implementation of evidence based clinical practice and research.
Dr Edile Murdoch
Consultant Neonatologist, NHS Lothian
Edile has developed a body of experience in external service and safety reviews, perinatal adverse event review, management and improvement and is chairing the NHS England “reading the signals” maternity and neonatal outcomes group. She chairs the Scottish perinatal network adverse event review group following publication of the maternity and neonatal (perinatal) adverse event review process: guidance 2021.
Dr Elizabeth Kendrick
Medical Director, Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust
She was appointed as medical director just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and has led in the setting up of new services within the trust including hospital@home services and remote monitoring. Elizabeth is also interested in using digital technology to improve and transform healthcare delivery and improving research and evaluation of new ways of delivering healthcare.
Fareeha Usman BEM
Head of EDI, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust
She champions equality, diversity, and inclusion as the head of EDI at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, the founder of Being Woman Charity, an ambassador for neurodiversity and pioneer of neuro-inclusion pathway at London Ambulance Service NHS Trust.
An alumna at King’s Fund, Usman’s initiatives include the free food-sharing app “Share Karo,” aiding those in need, she empowered over 100,000 women through digital skills and raised awareness around mental health and racial equity. Her accolades include Her Majesty the Queen’s baton bearer for the Commonwealth games. Usman is also a motivational speaker, embodying excellence, and philanthropy.
Professor Graham Martin
Director of Research, THIS Institute
Dr Heena Yousaf
Paediatric Specialty Registrar, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust and Civility Saves Lives
As a trainee she experienced sudden unexpected changes in her personal circumstances, which lead to an inter-deanery transfer. Through the support of her colleagues, supervisors, and senior management she has continued to progress in her career.
Heena is keen to share her experience and continues to work towards supporting fellow colleagues. She feels passionate about ensuring the help she received is available and accessible to all.
Professor Helen Bevan
Strategic Adviser at Horizons and Professor of Practice in Health and Care Improvement, Warwick Business School
Helen is recognised internationally for her ability to seek out and blend new ideas on change with a deep understanding and track record of implementing change in complex systems.
Dr Henrietta Hughes
Patient Safety Commissioner, Office of the Patient Safety Commissioner
Acting as an independent champion for patients Henrietta leads a drive to improve the safety of medicines and medical devices by ensuring that patient voices are at the heart of the design and delivery of healthcare in England. A practising GP and a member of the Health Honours Committee and the guiding group of the Women’s Health and Care Leaders Network, Henrietta was previously the national guardian for the NHS and a medical director at NHS England. Henrietta has held executive and non-executive roles in the NHS and is chair of Childhood First, a children’s charity.
Jane McCall
Chair, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
In addition to her role with the trust, she holds non-executive positions with the Information Commissioner’s Office, and was an external member of the House of Commons Commission until April 2021. In addition to her role with the trust, she is the chair of Peaks and Plains Housing Trust, a social housing provider based in Macclesfield.
Janine La Rosa
Chief People Officer, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust
Before working in the NHS, Janine was the diversity lead for Sky where she was responsible for ensuring the broadcast company represented the UK.
Dr John Ford
Senior Clinical Lecturer in Health Equity and Consultant in Public Health, Queen Mary University of London
Sir Julian Hartley
Chief Executive, NHS Providers
Professor Karen Dunderdale
Group Deputy Chief Executive and Executive Chief Nurse at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust
Karen qualified as a registered nurse in 1991 and her clinical experience has been in cardiology. She became a cardiac nurse specialist developing cardiac rehabilitation and heart failure services and has a PhD in Health Related Quality of Life in Chronic Heart Failure from York University. In 2017 Karen joined the national nursing team at NHS Improvement and in 2023, she was conferred as a visiting professor of nursing with the University of Lincoln.
Dr Kathryn Perera
Director, Horizons
Prior to working at Horizons, Kathryn spent a decade working in politics and community organising, including as chief executive of Movement for Change, a national social enterprise, she is also a practising barrister by background.
Dr Mamta Shetty Vaidya
Chief Medical Officer, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust
Mamta has a wealth of experience having held roles as both a clinical and a divisional director and she led the clinical transformation team. She has also been a key figure in the Pan London Improvement Collaborative for children and young people that focuses on integrated care as a way of improving life chances for children and families.
Dr Maxine Power
Director of Quality, Innovation and Improvement, North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust
Dr Mike More
Chair, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Mike has been chief executive of Westminster City Council and Suffolk County Council and held other senior positions in local government beforehand.
Dr Navina Evans
Chief Workforce and Training Officer, NHS England
Navina has over 20 years of clinical experience in psychiatry, medicine and paediatrics and previously held the positions of deputy chief executive and director of operations. She has also worked as the clinical director for child and adolescent mental health Services at ELFT.
Navina acts as a trustee for Think Ahead Organisation which develop straining programmes for mental health social work. She was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2020. She is a senior fellow at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement. Navina uses her voice in support of staff wellbeing and coproduction with patients,
advocating for the best possible quality of life and creating a culture of enjoying work for staff. She was awarded the Commander of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List for services to NHS Leadership and the black, Asian and minority ethnic community.
Nicky Littler
Executive Director of Workforce, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust
Paul Whiteing
Chief Executive, Action against Medical Accidents
Paul's focus at AvMA has been on creating the next five-year strategy and at the same time ensuring that the charity has a long-term plan to ensure that it can remain financially sustainable.
Professor Ramani Moonesinghe
National Clinical Director, Critical and Perioperative Care, NHS England
Ramani has a broad range of academic interests including risk prediction, improvement studies and the development and evaluation of complex interventions aimed at improving surgical outcome and reducing health inequalities. She was awarded the honour of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2021 for services to anaesthesia, perioperative and critical care.
Ranjit Kirton
Workplace Behaviour Innovator, The Behaviour Garage Ltd
Saffron Cordery
Interim chief executive
She has a degree in Modern Languages from the University in Manchester, for ten years was a board member and then chair of a 16–19 college in Hampshire and is a trustee of GambleAware, a leading charity committed to minimising gambling-related harm.
Scott Watkin BEM
Head of Engagement, SeeAbility
Shawnna Gleeson
Deputy Director of Workforce and OD, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust
Joining the NHS as deputy director of workforce and organisational development (OD), Shawnna champions EDI, prioritising values and person-cantered approaches. Her unwavering vision and commitment to effecting tangible change underscore her leadership, driving impactful transformations within organisations.
Professor Suzette Woodward
Visiting Professor, Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College University London
Tricia Whiteside
Non-Executive Director, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Her experience gathered over 25 years includes owning aspects of global control frameworks and assuring compliance to the expected standards of control, establishing Strategic Change Portfolios, operational delivery of integration programmes following organisational merges / acquisitions and lead upon significant business transformation. Over the last 10 years she successfully established her consultancy business which provided interim management support, with focus on setting up new operational functions and building sustainable internal capabilities, creating portfolios of strategic change to improve operational performance and financial stability, strengthening governance and control regimes, consulting on risk management strategies, and positively responding to increased regulatory scrutiny. Tricia is the chair of the trust’s Finance and Performance Committee.
Dr Vivek Patil
Deputy Chief Medical Officer / South East Regional Clinical Advisor NHS England, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Vivek has wealth of experience in cross boundary, working across primary, community and secondary care. For the last three years he has also been working as regional clinical advisor (Prehospital Medicine) NHS South East, and has been instrumental in establishing out-of-hospital offers across South East region.
Showcase
As part of the conference, we hosted our Quality and Improvement showcase. A key part of the conference, the showcase is opportunity for trusts to submit case studies of their best practice and learnings to raise their trusts' profile as part of our conference exhibition.
This year's showcase focused on embedding quality and improvement throughout delivery of patient care and was a chance to promote learnings and engage in discussions with peers. We sought to learn how trusts have demonstrated the ways in which they have used systematic improvement approaches to meet organisation-wide priorities and strategic objectives.
Our six finalists were:
- Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust
- Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust
- South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
- South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Learn more about our showcase finalists' and their case studies here.
Exhibitors
BD
BD is one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world and is advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics, and the delivery of care. The company develops innovative technology, services and solutions that help advance both clinical therapy for patients and clinical process for health care providers. BD has 65,000 employees and a presence in virtually every country around the world to address some of the most challenging global health issues. They help customers enhance outcomes, lower costs, increase efficiencies, improve safety and expand access to health care.
Get in touch: www.bd.com/en-uk
BD are one of our Connect partners. Learn more about our partnerships here.
Hempsons
Hempsons, a specialist health and social care law firm working across the public, private and third sectors, acts for over 200 NHS organisations nationwide on strategic and operational issues including integrated care, collaborations, service reconfigurations, patient safety, estates projects and workforce. Hempsons is a longstanding partner of NHS Providers and support them on a range of activities where legal issues are an important consideration. Please see Hempsons' webinars and podcasts for advice on a range of legal issues.
Get in touch:
www.hempsons.co.uk
@hempsonslegal
Hemspons' are one of our Transform partners. Learn more about our partnerships here.
NHS South, Central and West (NHS SCW)
Recovering and restoring services, the changing needs of populations, squeezed budgets, a workforce that's struggling to cope with demand. These are just some of the many challenges keeping you up at night. NHS SCW know that, more than ever, you need support to find solutions to your pinch-points. As an NHS organisation bringing together some of the brightest and best in health and social care, they are perfectly placed to help you define your issues and co-design solutions. As partners, they're dedicated to supporting you at every step of your journey to address your most pressing problems, and ultimately, to help you provide the best possible care to people.
Get in touch:
www.scwcsu.nhs.uk
@NHSscw
NHS SCW are one of our Collaborate partners. Learn more about our partnerships here.
Patchwork Health
Patchwork Health is on a mission to make flexible and sustainable working a reality for all healthcare staff. Their fully integrated workforce management solution helps optimise outcomes for organisations, managers, staff and patients. Built by a team of healthcare veterans, and co-created with the NHS, their technology and services have been embraced by over 100 healthcare sites.
Get in touch:
www.patchwork.health
www.linkedin.com/company/heypatchwork
@heypatchwork
Patchwork Health are one of our Connect partners. Learn more about our partnerships here.
Contact us
For further information or for any questions relating to the conference, email our events team at events@nhsproviders.org. You can also follow us on X and see our hashtag #Quality24 to see highlights from the conference.