Published on: 30th September 2015
Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has been ‘highly commended’, for two pieces of ground-breaking work in an upcoming national awards ceremony.
A project to aid healthcare staff with clinical risk assessments of their patients, and an article in a recent journal have both scooped the honours for the Trust, in October’s Care Coordination Association (CCA) Good Practice Awards.
A Clinical Risk Project has been developed by a group of staff over the past three years, who have designed, developed and evaluated a revised framework for assessing risk and clinical need for patients using mental health services.
This has included devising a pocket-sized guide for front line staff to keep them up-to-date, and the creation of a steering group to involve patients and gather their opinions.
The project was nominated in the Promoting Effective Care Processes and Standards category, and team member Dr Tracey Swaffer, said the new framework was all about embedding the importance of risk assessments into clinical practice and patient care.
Working together as clinicians who provide direct and indirect clinical services, we have taken our framework to teams throughout the Trust with the mantra of ‘don’t form fill, formulate’. Having received overwhelming positive feedback from front line clinicians, we are currently supporting the roll out of this new approach for assessing risk and clinical need.
Meanwhile, the Trust’s Assessment and Care Planning Team Coordinator Ann Munro, has been recognised for her article on clinical audits, which was included in a recent issue of the CCA’s own journal, The Approach.
The article supported the launch of the CCA’s new clinical audit tool which was developed with a team of experts, and aims to support services to identify and develop best practice in the assessment and planning of care.
Her submission, which was voted for by CCA members, was recognised in the Most Useful Article category.
Ann also contributed the guest editorial in the same edition of the journal and had a second article featured called ‘Focus on Care Planning’.
It is the ninth year in a row that the Trust has featured in the awards ceremony, which looks to showcase outstanding areas of practice that are taking place across the healthcare community.
The Trust will formally receive its recognition at the Good Practice Awards, which take place on 30th October.
