Senior user evaluation of QI Notify-EmLap at Dudley Group.
Mr Peter Waterland, Consultant Colorectal Surgeon (Dudley Group NHSFT) gives his evaluation of the QI Notify App, please click below:
Evaluation of the need for a digital tool to support feedback, training and quality improvement along the emergency laparotomy pathway.
Assessment and methods
In July 2022 the WMAHSN hosted the 7th in a series of Emergency Laparotomy Collaboratives, at which the QI Notify-EmLap solution in use at Dudley Group NHSFT was demonstrated, explained and discussed. The session was attended by 54 delegates, with representatives from 13 of the 14 hospitals across the West Midlands, and included senior and trainee surgeons, anaesthetists, emergency physicians, geriatricians, theatre staff, and others with responsibility for the emergency laparotomy pathway. They represent a panel of experts in regard to real delivery of emergency laparotomy care.
At the end of the meeting delegates were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with the following statements:
- Individual patient level feedback about the delivery of care to patients on the emergency laparotomy audit, is rarely or never performed at my hospital outside of an occasional Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
- Nobody (0%) disagreed or strongly disagreed,
- 65% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed, and
- 35% were neutral or felt unable to comment.
- QI Notify-EmLap has the potential to fill an information gap and improve learning and understanding about what works well, and what could be improved along the emergency laparotomy pathway.
- Nobody (0%) disagreed,
- 85% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed, and
- 15% were neutral. Nobody (0%) felt unable to comment.
- Assuming NELA data collection was optimised, and sufficient admin support provided to allow the full adoption of QI Notify-EmLap at my hospital, then QI Notify-EmLap could lead to an improvement in quality of care and outcomes for patients undergoing an emergency laparotomy.
- Nobody (0%) disagreed or strongly disagreed,
- 89% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed and
- 11% were neutral or felt unable to comment
Comment
This evaluation of expert clinicians, managers and clinical leaders responsible for delivering care across the emergency laparotomy pathway confirms a lack of individualised ‘near real-time’ patient feedback in acute hospitals, as well as support for the idea that QI Notify-EmLap could fill that gap, and that such a tool should lead to embedding high quality care and subsequently lead to improved outcomes.
NELA recognise that the carefully collected and clinically validated data set which is collected to support evaluation of this pathway is at risk of disappearing into a ‘black hole’, before reappearing as summative feedback in to either NELA’s quarterly or annual reports. Therefore NELA encourage local teams to use their own data regularly. However the richness and frequency of local audits cans vary enormously, as manual manipulation of the data is time consuming. QI Notify-EmLap offers a way to supplement both local audit and NELA reports to further enhance training and QI along this important pathway.
App User Survey / Feedback
If you have used QI Notify-EmLap we would appreciate receiving your feedback. We would like to invite you to undertake a five-minute survey. This is being finalised and will be available shortly.
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