Darent Valley Hospital - DGT - Quality Strategy

Foreword

We are excited to introduce our Quality Strategy: free from harm with thoughtfulness, skill and respect to guide the Trust over the next five years. We have progressed significantly over the past five years, evidenced by our achievement of our ‘Good’ rating by the CQC in 2019. Our alliance relationship with Guy’s and St. Thomas’ has brought new training and development opportunities for our staff and has supported us in the adoption of the Nightingale programme. Our ward accreditation has been rolled out to 21 wards, 15 of which have been accredited. Although improvement in the quality of our services will result in staff being more joyous at work, better engagement with our partners, improved efficiency and adoption of digital technologies, the Quality Strategy primarily supports the delivery of two of the Trust strategic priorities for the next five years: ‘Journey to Outstanding’ and ‘Continuous Quality Improvement’. Our Quality Strategy focuses on five priorities, which are instrumental in their delivery, and these are: • Positive patient experience: Enriching the experience of our patients and their families • Harm-free care: Protecting our patients, by reducing the proportion of clinical incidents that cause harm • Effective care: Improving clinical outcomes for our patients by providing the best evidence- based care, every time • A culture of excellence: Providing our staff with the best skills, training and education to deliver high standards of professional practice • Reduce mortality: Achieve position in 10% of NHS organisations with the lowest risk adjusted mortality This quality strategy progresses us on our journey to Outstanding. We will provide clinical care that is free from harm and we will provide that care with thoughtfulness, skill and respect. The quality strategy is the framework through which improvements in the services we offer to patients can be focused and measured for the planning, implementation, evaluation and reporting of quality services. Although we know that we deliver good care, and that overall on most indicators we are comparable to similar National Health Service organisations, we are not content with just being good, we want to be outstanding; we want our patients

and their families to receive care and experience that is outstanding, and we want our staff to feel valued and committed to ensuring they provide personalised, comprehensive and effective care. We are committed to ensuring that the voice and experience of our staff, patients and communities is used to drive improvements across our services. This Quality Strategy is set in a challenging time; We know that we continue to find it hard to recruit clinical staff at all levels and skill sets, and we are seeing an increase in infection rates and the acuity of our patients. We are not alone in these challenges; services out of the hospital setting are also hard-pushed to deliver the care they would like to. We are committed to working collaboratively with our partners to improve the overall population health. We are also exploring how best we protect our patients and staff from COVID-19 whilst ensuring that care is accessible, safe and that our patients remain connected and supported by their loved ones whilst in hospital. We are embracing digital solutions and working closely with our local community to make considered changes to the care we provide. We will be closely monitoring the delivery of the strategy at our monthly Quality & Safety Committee which reports to our Trust Board. The papers and minutes of these, as well as our strategies for 2020-2025, can be found on the Dartford and Gravesham Trust website. We will also continue to publish our annual Quality Account, also available on our website.

Siobhan Callanan Chief Nurse

Steve Wilmshurst Non-Executive Director,

Chair of Quality & Safety Committee