Clare Connor
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Watch Clare talk about the project.
The musculoskeletal physiotherapy service within Aneurin Bevan University Heath Board (ABUHB) currently engages in a clinical quality paper audit of patient records. The audit tool measures compliance with legal documentation standards and the recording of clinical reasoning and decision making. It is time consuming to complete and does not adequately represent the Health and Care Standards Wales (HCSW) that the service recognises as guiding principles for prudent high quality healthcare. Repeated audits have not led to behaviour change or service improvements.
The Project:
The project is a pilot study with a cohort of physiotherapy clinicians to explore the acceptance, utility and impact of an online clinical quality application (CQA) that enables clinicians to rate elements of clinical interactions against the HCSW. Ratings are represented as a personal performance dashboard and can also be shared to inform service level performance data.
Project Outcomes:
Clinician views on how to improve clinical quality evaluation were defined by 3 themes: A need to:
- Simplify.
- Incorporate into daily practice, personal reflection and mentoring
- Inform learning and improvement through evaluation.
The CQA was tested in 7 MSK Physiotherapy departments in ABUHB. It gathered data and generated personalised and service level aggregated quality dashboards.
Feedback was returned by 27 clinicians and 6 service managers and clinical leads.
Project Impact:
- 74% said a CQA entry took less than 4 minutes to complete.
- Ease of access was ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ for 71% clinicians and 100% managers and clinical leads.
- Clinicians said that the CQA is quick and easy to use; feels meaningful and relevant; encourages reflection and organises data to inform development.
