Key actions identified for next stage of ‘Project A’ following submission of 600 ideas

Six key activities have emerged from more than 600 ideas generated (above) by hundreds of ambulance staff across the country during the #ProjectA process.

Following a nationwide review of the best ideas, these areas have emerged as the focus of national innovation in the country’s ambulance services.

#ProjectA was launched in March by Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England and facilitated by NHS Horizons along with AACE, to deliver new ideas for patient care and staff welfare.

Helen Bevan, Chief Transformation Officer at NHS Horizons, said:

This is an improvement programme led by front line staff, and we want to make sure it remains true to this ethos.

Ambulance chief executives recognise the connections that have been made and the desire to improve patient and staff care from the ideas generated by frontline and support service colleagues.

The six areas are:

  1. Action on falls:The aim is to develop and implement a falls response framework that will be relevant to every ambulance service and that will lead to better, more appropriate services for people who fall, less conveyance and/or help stop people from falling in the first place or falling again.
  2. Action on mental health and emotional distress:To create an actionable “knowledge bank” for use by frontline ambulance staff and share and test approaches to supporting people in mental health crisis and emotional distress.
  3. Action on partnership: people, families and the wider community:
    To co-produce a campaign that focusses on how to access and use services. It will be a two-way partnership, created in the spirit of community engagement, co-creation and activism, using multiple communication channels including social media.
  4. Action on staff wellbeing:Develop a virtual collaborative that looks to support ongoing work within the Human Resource Directors’ Group (HRDs) and Strategic Partnership Forum (trust and union representatives) with a focus on implementing clinical supervision across all ambulance services.
  5. A directory of ideas for improvement:Share the 70 ideas with the most potential for implementation from the #ProjectA ideas’ platform and create a series of challenges to help make trusts introduce them.
  6. Virtual collaboration: Build the capability of the ambulance workforce to collaborate virtually; reducing time away from work and abstraction; increasing opportunities for sharing, learning and speeding up change.

Opportunities to get involved with any of these projects are available by contacting your local Project A lead or by following the project on Twitter (@HorizonsNHS / #ProjectA). Alternatively you can drop NHS Horizons a line here.