Healthcare Improvement Scotland Blog

Posts tagged “ihub”

Let’s talk about dementia: dementia awareness month – Marina Logan

Posted on September 16, 2019

It’s September which means its World Alzheimer’s Month – the annual international campaign to raise awareness and challenge the stigma that surrounds dementia.

My family’s medical history has largely been characterised by heart attacks and strokes so dementia wasn’t something I had ever particularly worried about. How wrong was I? It transpired that, at various points between late 2013 and early 2014, my mum had a series of mini strokes. There were no obvious physical signs so neither we, nor mum, realised what had happened. These mini strokes interrupted the blood supply to the brain, and this is what caused her to have vascular dementia.

“It was little things the family noticed at first, things we put down to old age forgetfulness. She was in her 80s after all. At that age, anyone could put a pot on the hob and forget about it or not know what day or year it was. It really only became obvious when she couldn’t remember her own address.”

Marina and her mum, Iolanda

It was little things the family noticed at first, things we put down to old age forgetfulness. She was in her 80s after all. At that age, anyone could put a pot on the hob and forget about it or not know what day or year it was. It really only became obvious when she couldn’t remember her own address – she’d only lived there for 50 years! She laughed that off and said we were ‘being daft’ but it got worse. She became confused. Simple things became a challenge, like turning on the living room fire, she was convinced someone had changed the dials. She thought we were hiding things in the house to confuse her. She got frustrated and this made her quite ‘sweary’ – which could occasionally be funny when it wasn’t mortifying. Although mum had never been shy about speaking her mind, she was inappropriate at times, losing the filter that stops a person saying whatever they fancy about someone loudly in the street (again, mortifying!). Mum had lived alone since my dad died in 1996, so my brother, two sisters and I checked on her every day, visiting and phoning, and we were supported by her GP.

“I’m so proud of the work that Focus on Dementia does, in partnership, to improve the experience and quality of care and support for people living with dementia, carers and staff.”

We were lucky, in a way, that mum only lived like this for maybe 6 months. On 21 April 2014 we were left devastated when she had a major heart attack and stroke. She was in hospital until 17 June, then we were allowed to take her home to care for her, supported by the amazing community nurse team, until she died on 29 June. 

I’m so proud of the work that Focus on Dementia does, in partnership, to improve the experience and quality of care and support for people living with dementia, carers and staff. Dementia can touch anyone’s life but with the right support it’s possible to live well and continue to be an active, valued member of society. The more information we have the better, the more we talk about dementia the better. So get involved, become a dementia friend, read more on the Alzheimer Scotland website, or come and talk to the Focus on Dementia team or visit the Focus on Dementia webpage. 

Marina Logan is a Project Officer within the Focus on Dementia team of Healthcare Improvement Scotland

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Tagged: focus on dementia, ihub

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How equality and diversity can help create better care for all – Mario Medina

Posted on July 25, 2019

Mario-medina

You might think equality and diversity has little to do with health and social care, and that complying with the Equality Act is just a tick box exercise that we all feel duty-bound to comply with. Yet I believe that these two factors are crucial in ensuring Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s work has impact, and that it truly improves health and social care for everyone in Scotland.

Assuming that a programme of work will lead to improvements for all, without trying to really understand the diverse needs of those we want to benefit from the work, can lead to us discriminating against individuals, as well as widening Scotland’s health inequalities gap. Moreover, it can be a sure-fire way to ensure that the aims of the project fall short of our intentions.

Assuming that a programme of work will lead to improvements for all, without trying to really understand the diverse needs of those we want to benefit from the work, can lead to us discriminating against individuals, as well as widening Scotland’s health inequalities gap.

As a health body, the Equality Act requires us to eliminate discrimination, advance equality, tackle prejudice and promote understanding across nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. It’s a responsibility that we all share, particularly as each of us has at least five of the nine characteristics. That’s why it’s important to consider the potential impact of our work at the beginning of each project to ensure that it is set up in order to improve care for as many people as possible. To achieve this, a tick box exercise will fail all of us. To really bring about improvements for all of us, equality and diversity have to be factors that we wholeheartedly commit to.

But how exactly do we ensure that a genuine commitment to equality and diversity is built into our work? Let me give you some examples of strategies that have worked for us.

Our Standards and Indicators team considered how the new cervical screening standards might be received fairly by everyone. Potential issues were identified and action taken to engage with different groups who might be impacted, improving our understanding of how to address these issues. Engagement with minority ethnic people identified potential cultural barriers to accessing cervical screening. The standards therefore included a stipulation about the provision of good quality information and strategies that NHS boards can adopt to identify those most unlikely to attend. We also identified issues from the trans community and built that perspective into the standards to ensure assumptions would not be made based on gender when identifying those eligible for screening.

Due to this type of engagement with people whose views are often under-represented in decision-making processes, we were able to design and develop standards with equality and diversity at their heart.

But to ensure we’re factoring equality and diversity into everything we do, we also need to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. We’ve taken a number of steps to improve in this area. We’re part of the Disability Confident scheme, which helps employers recruit and retain disabled people. Each year we complete Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index (WEI), a tool for employers to measure their progress on lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) inclusion. During Mental Health Awareness Week, our staff took part in See Me’s Pass the Badge campaign, which encourages people to talk about mental health. We’ve also successfully recruited Modern Apprentices to Trainee Administrative Assistant roles. These actions and initiatives have improved career opportunities for people from a broad range of backgrounds.

Due to this type of engagement with people whose views are often underrepresented in decision-making processes, we were able to design and develop standards with equality and diversity at their heart.

The real evidence of our commitment to equality and diversity came with the creation of the Margaret McAlees Award in collaboration with Unison’s Scottish Health Care Branch. Established in honour of our late colleague Margaret McAlees, a Unison steward renowned for helping advance equality and promoting diversity, the nominations highlighted some of the great work our staff are doing. Our SIGN guidelines development team promoted the rights of young people to be involved in decisions which affect them, and worked to ensure patient versions of guidelines were accessible for them. The team behind our Scottish Patient Safety Programme for Mental Health were nominated as early adopters of a human rights-based approach to their work and for their efforts to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination. The award winners, our Focus on Dementia team, demonstrated a commitment to improving the lives of people living with dementia over and above what could be expected of them, undertaking voluntary work and participating in fundraising events in their own time. This work has improved the wider public’s understanding of dementia and how it affects people’s lives.

As an improvement organisation, we’re always looking to do things better. That’s no different when it comes to equality and diversity. We don’t want to simply meet our duties, we want to exceed them. I’m delighted to be in a position where I can look back on excellent work that is making equality and diversity a key part of what we do, and also to support its further development.

Mario Medina is Equality and Diversity Advisor for Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

More information

Healthcare Improvement Scotland website

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: equality and diversity, ihub, impact campaign, standards and guidelines

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Midwives, Ministers, Minions… and the Quality Improvement Awards – Cheryl Clark

Posted on June 13, 2017

The picture above shows me in November 2016. Catriona Shearer (on my left) had declared I was the winner in the ‘Quality Improvement Champion’ category at the Scottish Government and Healthcare Improvement Scotland Quality Improvement Awards. On my right is Mark McDonald (Scottish Government Minister for Childcare and Early Years). The minister said to me, ‘Congratulations – a popular choice by the sound of it’. I answered a tad too loudly, ‘Thanks very much Martin’. Martin?! By now, multiple cameras were pointing at us. Trying to smile I couldn’t help internally cringing at my faux pas. Winning was not the only surprise of the night. One of the reasons I was nominated was my improvement approach in NHS Lanarkshire as a midwife improvement advisor.…

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Healthcare Improvement, healthcare improvement scotland, ihub, quality improvement awards

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Bold in scale, simple in aim: Why you should join Q – Penny Pereira

Posted on March 30, 2017

Q is a community – a critical mass of people who are all working, in many different ways, to improve health and care in the UK. The aim is to support continuous and sustainable improvement. Q is bold in scale, and simple in aim. We’re seeking to make it easier for people to share, learn and collaborate across boundaries because we think this is key to making a bigger difference for those we serve. How? If you were to look at our theory of change the language we use is around enabling people to connect, develop, mobilise and support each other. While we know there is a lot of great improvement work happening at a local level, often it is limited to a professional group,…

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Tagged: Healthcare Improvement, ihub

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Healthcare Improvement Scotland Blog

The purpose of Healthcare Improvement Scotland is to enable the people of Scotland to experience the best quality of health and social care.

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