Leading Better Care: Report of the Senior Charge Nurse Review and Clinical Quality Indicators Project

Section 1

Introduction

This publication brings together the outcomes of two important projects: the Senior Charge Nurse/Midwife ( SCN) Review and the Clinical Quality Indicators ( CQI) Project. The outcome of the SCN Review highlights the benefits of having a consistent framework for Senior Charge Nurses in hospitals across NHSScotland. The CQI project has developed indicators for adult in-patient areas and made progress towards developing CQIs for other in-patient settings.

Although these projects shared a similar methodology and both aim to support continued improvements in quality of care for patients in hospital, their outcomes will be considered separately.

Methodology for projects

The projects were designed to encourage wide stakeholder involvement. This approach enabled the projects to include the views of patients, health care professionals and NHS executive directors. In addition each Senior Charge Nurse had an opportunity to participate. The contributions of all these stakeholders have driven the development of both the Senior Charge Nurse role and the CQIs. The project methodology is summarised in Figure 1.

Each project was tested over a six-month period. This was carried out in collaboration with all NHS boards. Five boards ( NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Grampian, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lanarkshire) were involved in testing and refining the Framework for the SCN role and CQI dataset, and the remaining territorial boards were involved in creating a network of facilitation and support.

Figure 1: Projects' processes