Each year, QuDoS recognises professionals and teams who go above and beyond in caring for patients with MS or improving their own practices and communities. But the event is not just about recognition for recognition’s sake. It is also about highlighting successful strategies and initiatives so that others can learn from them.
We dove into the QuDoS Compendium from the 2019 recognition event, full of case studies and testimonials from the winners, to identify the four biggest recurring themes. These are the ingredients we heard over and over again that formed a recipe for success.
1. Communication and collaboration are key
Many of the 2019 winners found areas where professionals weren’t communicating or sharing best practices, and set out to correct that. For instance, Katie Hanson, who won an outstanding MS nurse commendation, started a working group for paediatric MS nurses to share ideas and develop standards documents.
Outstanding MS pharmacist Joela Mathews started the UK Neurology Pharmacists Network, and, as a result, members of this specialty felt better supported in their roles and were able to develop effective protocols and procedures together.
“Don’t worry too much about having a formal agenda or getting funding – all you need to do is get people with a similar passion and a problem to solve in the same room,” she wrote.
And a judge’s special recognition went to MS Specialist Nurse Maureen Ennis, who established the South East London Kent and Medway (SELKAM) Regional MS Nurse Advisory Group in 1990, and was still going strong nearly 30 years later.
2. Multidisciplinary teams can handle challenges that individuals can’t
It really does take a village to provide great care, and many of the winners in 2019 cited the importance of multidisciplinary teams in getting things done for patients.
Sarah Brenton, a specialist neurological practitioner at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust, received the Outstanding MS Physiotherapist commendation. She said that working with a team that included nurses and therapists, and having the team truly work together and communicate, allowed them to launch several projects that helped MS patients and carers feel more taken care of.
And the team at Hertfordshire Neurological Service, Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust, who received the Team of the Year commendation, cited multidisciplinary teams as a key component to their accomplishment of launching new care pathways for patients with unmet needs.
“Cross-disciplinary team working, plus increased specialist knowledge and understanding of MS, has allowed development of the different care pathways,” the team wrote. “The team were able to demonstrate, using data and case studies, where there were clear unmet patient needs and then focused in on those areas.”
3. Every patient is different
Another common theme was that when you’ve seen one MS patient, you’ve seen one MS patient. Every patient has different experiences, needs, and goals, and good treatment involves acknowledging that and building flexible systems to accommodate those diverse needs.
“Each patient has a different set of goals,” wrote Dr Barbara Chandler, who won outstanding MS physician in 2019 for her work with the Neuro-Rehabilitation Project with Highland Hospice. “Previous examples have included being more independent in a wheelchair, regaining the ability to self-feed and fatigue management.”
Iris Hume, who won an outstanding nurse commendation for launching a new MS service, started her whole project with an audit to identify unmet patient needs. And Outstanding MS occupational therapist Susan Hourihan started her MDT transition clinic because she noticed that a particular group of patients, those in transition between relapsing and progressive disease, had needs that weren’t being met.
4. Don’t overlook organisation and logistics
Innovative ideas impress the judges, but behind those ideas is always an execution that’s more complicated than expected.
In the case studies, awardees were asked to identify the biggest challenges in their projects. So many cited organisational or logistical problems, like outstanding MS nurse awardee Karen Vernon, who said that the hardest part of her MS education programme was arranging travel and accommodation for attendees and having enough staff and volunteers to run the course.
Or outstanding MS physician awardee David Paling, who said his challenge was dealing with increased demand without an increase in staffing or resources. The best solution he can offer is to look for opportunities to improve efficiency.
“Look at processes and keep asking the question ‘do we need to do this?’ and ‘can we do it better?’” he wrote. “Talk to the management team about extra staff who could help to streamline non-clinical time so that physicians and nurses can spend more time with patients.”