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Posted on 1 Nov 2023

Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s Arnold Lodge’s Quality Improvement (QI) team has been shortlisted for the Rosa Parks category at the #FabAwards23 for their project to coproduce QI training for patients at the unit.

The Fab Awards are hosted by the Academy of Fabulous NHS Stuff at their annual conference. The Rosa Parks award is in celebration of the American civil rights activist and recognises work that is brave enough to reject conformity and find new, inspiring and effective ways of working.

The team was nominated following a project with a group of patients at Arnold Lodge to redesign the Bronze QI training and develop a package for patients. The Bronze training is a two hour course designed to be an introduction to QI. Members of the QI team worked with the patients and Nottingham Recovery College to adapt the training to meet the needs of patients.

Nigel Groves, Involvement, Experience and Volunteering Lead for Forensic Services, said, “Quality improvement projects are specific pieces of work that aim to deliver better care outcomes for patients. However, patient engagement is often not captured throughout this process when aiming to understand an issue and implementing change.

“We identified that there was a need to do more involvement in QI projects across the Forensic Care Group and a training package was needed, to aid patient involvement. Arnold Lodge were leading the way with QI projects and asked their patients and the Trust’s QI Team to support the co-production of the QI Bronze for patients via the Recovery College.”

One of the patients involved said, “This training is very important and will help patients and staff improving services - and it helps to build therapeutic activities.”

Ashley Willan, QI Lead, said “The patient group were not just incredibly successful in understanding the material, but they were meticulous in redesigning its content to meet the needs of both them and their peers.  This fantastic work will now inform and support further work across other areas of the Trust in QI training for patients, service users/carers.”

Patients at Arnold Lodge have used their training to help lead their own QI projects, such as a pilot in collaboration with psychology teams and occupational therapy for adult mental health team to improve the frequency of field trips.

Following a successful launch of the patient QI training, it will now be rolled out to other Trust sites including Wells Road, Wathwood Hospital and Rampton Hospital. Patients from Arnold Lodge will participate in the roll out and co-deliver the training sessions.

Adele Fox, Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s Forensic Care Group Director, said, “We are really proud that the Fab Awards has recognised the work of patients and colleagues at Arnold Lodge to adapt and coproduce QI training for patients. Nottinghamshire Healthcare is committed to involving people in our work and using their experiences and views to improve our services. This is a great example of this work in action.”

Public voting has now opened on the Fab NHS Stuff website and closes on 5 November. Members of the team will attend the award ceremony in December.