Kate was involved with the Healthy Aging Collaborative (HAC) which is working to engage community based services in improving care for frail, elderly people. The HAC work includes exploring and evaluating how the eFI can be used in primary care to identify frail patients in the population and build services tailored to their needs. I was involved with developing a business case and evaluation proposal for use of the STOPP protocol to undertake medication reviews for care home patients.

She was involved in work that is looked at care of patients with AKI, applying behaviour change theory to improve care these for patients. This is work being undertaken with the Bradford Institute for Health research. At the same time Kate was part of the project group for the scaling up Health Foundation Project for AKI care – implementing education programmes, alerts and care bundles across the trusts involved in West Yorkshire.

Kate was part of the project group for the scaling up of Safety Huddles, working as a coach/link between the front-line teams on a variety of wards in LTHT and the project group.

Kate was also involved in the early stages of work to engage nursing homes with the idea of safety huddles and other improvement work. She worked with several teams within the BRI around improving care and culture.

Kate attended the HEYH working group meetings around setting up a pilot Multi-professional Quality Review visit, along with being part of the panel for the visit.

Kate shared some reflections at the end of her year working with the Improvement Academy as a Clinical Leadership Fellow:

Working as part of the Healthy Ageing Collaborative (HAC), I have taken a leading role in writing a business plan and developing and undertaking an evaluation protocol for improving care of frail, elderly care home resident through improving GP medication review. This has allowed me to work with multiple organisations – CCGs, GP collaborative, York Health Economics Consortium and Academic Unit of Elderly Care and Rehabilitation.

I have gained a great insight into community services, social services and the wider NHS structure over and above what I have learnt during my geriatrics training – it is an invaluable experience.