Learning from Excellence - NHS Focus

In the NHS, staff may experience a culture of finger pointing when something goes wrong. This can lead to damaged morale and even fear of documenting incidents. In turn, fewer incidents reported means fewer opportunities for learning and therefore decreased patient safety. Learning from Excellence (LfE) is all about studying excellence in healthcare, as well as learning and improving resilience of staff.

When something goes especially well, who was responsible, how can we best document it and how can we share it so that lessons can be learned and safety in healthcare can be improved?

Examples of LfE

What can NHS organisations class as exceptional and therefore aim to replicate in future?

• Someone performs beyond their normal role
• Introducing something innovative and new
• Working excellently in a team
• The ability to adapt to unexpected situations and avoid any risks
• Excellent rapport with patients and family

The list could go on, but these are just a few examples of situations that should be documented in a system to help improve resilience and staff morale.

How to improve learning from excellence

The main reason to learn from excellence is to improve the quality of care you provide in your NHS organisation, through both sharing positives and rewarding staff with the recognition they deserve.

Every organisation should have a formal system to capture excellence, which creates new opportunities for learning across the teams and ensures nothing gets missed.

Radar Healthcare is an ideal option which contains event reporting (incidents, compliments and complaints) as well as a multitude of other linked modules. Create customised forms to log all episodes of excellence, and share these to all relevant staff with ease. This way the member of staff responsible for the excellent performance gets recognition, and others are shown what has worked well. Through this method, improved standardisation of procedures is encouraged, and therefore better quality of care.

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