>>Dr Farzana Hussain: So this is my last video diary, and it’s been a really fantastic
experience to be able to share the last 12 months of my quality improvement journey with
you. And it’s been a lovely time for me to manage to put into practice my learning
from the General Practice Improvement Leaders programme.
In previous video diaries I talked about our appointments for hay fever that were taking
up about 10% of our total GP appointment time in the summer. And now summer has come round
again a year later and we have zero percent patients asking us for hay fever medications
and consulting with us, and this has shown me that it’s really important to stick with
the change. Change can be hard, but if you give it enough time, you can see sustainable
changes and we’re really pleased that now that hay fever season has come again, that
we’ve made a 10% saving on our very precious GP appointments.
Another update has been our online booking appointments. We’ve found that patients
have been increasingly booking online appointments and we’ve had a 50% increase in the number
of appointments that patients are booking directly online. And so they’re freeing
up receptionist time who are not needing to answer the phone, or seeing patients at the
desk to book these appointments, so they’re available to help with chronic disease management
recalls.
My learning from these two wonderful examples for me, is that change takes time and it’s
important not to give up, because sustainable change does take time but the rewards at the
end of it are definitely worth it.
Quality improvement has helped our team come together really well. It’s now embedded
in our culture and staff are not afraid to give their ideas because of the ‘leadership
by all’ aspect that I learnt about in the change model. We can all have a say from receptionist
to lead GP and if we spot any challenges or issues, then we turn to quality improvement
to solve the problem and that’s something we never had before.
So for patients, they now have more access to the doctors and the nurses and we’re
able to provide appropriate appointments to give patients the right care at the right
time.
So quality improvement is definitely going to continue at The Project’s Surgery and
our next project is about how to manage our hypertensive patients more efficiently. We
are thinking about increasing access for patients so they don’t need booked appointments and
decreasing the doctor appointment time from 10 minutes to just a couple of minutes to
review things.
So personally for me, I’m going to be the quality improvement lead in our cluster of
seven practices, which will involve me going into practices and facilitating and helping
them with their own projects. Also with the medical school, I’m going to go in to teach
some quality improvement, right down to our first and second year medical students so
that they can be introduced to this early. I was always sad that I had to wait after
15 years of being a GP to be introduced to this and I’m really keen for these skills
to be passed on to our younger colleagues.
From my experience, my advice to any practices who haven’t embarked on their journey yet
is to just give it a go, it can be lots of fun. It can really improve your practice and
it can really bring your team together, you might find some really hidden jewels in your
practice staff that you didn’t know existed. It will improve your working day in the practice
because things will run more smoothly and efficiently and patients will get the right
care at the right time that they need.
My advice is to give quality improvement a go. I wish you all the best on your quality
improvement journey and I hope that you have as much fun and success as we’ve had.
Slide narrative – This diary is the last in a series where Farzana shared her quality
improvement journey. Please visit out YouTube channel to view previous diaries.