Editorial

Citation

Jackson, S. (2002), "Editorial", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 15 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2002.06215daa.001

Editorial

A number of people have informed me that they know little about the Centre for Excellence Development at the University of Salford. Given this to be the case and the fact that the centre provides so much support to health-care organisations in their pursuit of quality and excellence, I thought that I would dedicate this editorial to providing readers with details of the organisation that I believe is one of the best places in which to work, in addition to being one of the best resources for promoting and supporting quality and excellence within health care.

The Centre for Excellence Development at the University of Salford

The Centre for Excellence Development (CED) was founded in January 1997 by the then University of Salford Department of Continuing Education and Management School and Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust in order to provide a resource to both the University and the National Health Service (NHS) in the field of quality and excellence development. In 1999 the CED gained NHS learning centre status and more recently became a consultancy and research unit within the University.

The vision of the Centre is to:

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  accelerate the achievement of key health-care policy and strategy objectives by sharing learning and supporting change;

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  demonstrate performance improvements through the application of leading edge health-care practice and publicising them through information and communication technologies; and

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  focus leading edge academic and practical expertise on solution development, which expedites health-care organisations to achieve excellence.

The approach of the Centre

Because the CED has a research and development remit within its portfolio, there has always been a drive to determine the characteristics associated with successful implementation of quality and excellence. Given this to be the case, the CED has a wealth of experience in designing, agreeing and facilitating context-specific implementation approaches that meet the needs of the team and/or organisation wishing to adopt the principles of quality and excellence. A key aspect to this is determining in the first instance the overall objectives and deliverables that the team/organisation want to achieve from using the quality/excellence tools and then aligning existing and future initiatives and efforts towards those objectives. That way past efforts are not discarded and future developments can easily be incorporated into the new way of working.

Most key associates of the Centre have a health-care background and indeed some of them still hold a health-care position in addition to their secondment with the Centre. That way the team is fully appreciative of the issues and challenges facing health-care professionals today.

The fact that the Centre has been able to engage with a number and range of health-care organisations at a time when the pressure is on to deliver government objectives is an indication of the Centre's ability to convey the potential value of the work it undertakes. Staff working for the health-care organisations involved with the Centre have praised the team members at the Centre for their sensitivity and ability to establish a genuine partnership in their efforts to ensure a culture of quality and excellence.

Training and support provided

The Centre's expertise lies in quality and excellence development and so many courses have been developed to support teams and/or organisations to apply many of the widely used tools and techniques for quality and excellence development. Training and support can be provided for:

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  self-assessment (via excellence models);

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  process mapping;

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  continuous improvement support;

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  coaching and mentoring;

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  complex problem solving;

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  risk management;

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  performance management;

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  Pareto analysis;

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  balanced score-card;

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  negotiation skills;

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  change management; and

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  undertaking research.

Whilst the Centre has many "off the shelf" courses, it also prides itself in designing and delivering bespoke courses to meet the needs of teams and organisations wanting to improve the quality of their service.

Networks

The Centre has a wealth of networks including:

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  the NHS;

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  European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM);

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  British Quality Foundation;

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  Education Sector;

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  Department of Health;

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  Cabinet Office;

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  Health-Promoting Hospitals;

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  World Health Organisation; and

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  many European quality organisations.

Three members of the Centre are members of the EFQM Health Sector Group, a group that has a European-wide network of organisations using the EFQM excellence model within health care. Two members of the Centre were invited by EFQM to contribute to the work of the public sector steering group, which had the remit of agreeing the final terminology of the current public and voluntary sectors version of the EFQM excellence model. One key associate of the CED is a member of the EFQM public sector group, which manages the communities of practice programme (see www.efqm.org for more details).

Spreading the word

In recognition of their expertise and experience in this field, associates of the Centre are regularly invited to be present at national and international conferences. Furthermore, personnel aligned to the Centre have published widely in this field; below are a sample of their publications:

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  Jackson, S. (2001), The EFQM Excellence Model in Health Care: A Practical Guide to Success, Kingsham Press, West Sussex.

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  Stahr, H., Bulman, B. and Stead, M. (2000), The EFQM Excellence Model in the Health Sector. Sharing Good Practice, Kingsham Press, West Sussex.

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  Perides, M. and Cole, R. (1995), "Managing values and organizational climate in a multi-professional setting", Inter-professional Relations in Health Care, Edward Arnold.

Making a difference

The Centre prides itself on ensuring that organisations see the difference from their learning and continuous improvement efforts. One example of where involvement with the Centre brought about added value is where a trust identified a particularly good approach for developing the results focus with which health care has so often struggled. The approach involved preparing a process flow chart for significant clinical processes. At certain steps of the process the team ensured that they determined the result(s) that they expected from the action documented. Hence, if a patient were to receive a certain intervention or element of care (nursing, medical or otherwise), the team would identify what that intervention or care was hoping to achieve. Once the desired achievements were identified, the team was then able to set up systems to measure the difference its actions were making.

A second example is in dealing with health-care personnel's anxieties when embarking upon the EFQM excellence model. One front-line staff member expressed concern that by determining desired results areas and setting targets for improvement they may be setting themselves up to fail. The response by the CED team was that they were setting themselves up to learn and improve, which was in no way a failing. Once the team recognised this, they were motivated towards improving the quality of care in a way that they had not felt before.

Walking the talk

Finally, the Centre uses the EFQM excellence model for continuously improving its own performance, thereby demonstrating that it is truly worthy of the title of Centre for Excellence Development. If you would like to know more about the Centre, then please feel free to access our Web site on: www.som.salford.ac.uk/ced

Your comments for our improvement are also very welcome.

Sue Jackson