Last year, we spoke to Deirdre Baker, Clinical Design Lead at Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH), who was initiating a project to promote the use of the London Care Record among frontline staff. One year on, we caught up with Dee to find out how the project has progressed (24 October 2024).

Remind Us About the Project

Our project aimed to support CLCH staff in utilising shared care records, including the London Care Record and the Hertfordshire and West Essex Shared Care Record (for our services in West Hertfordshire).

Our goal was for staff to maximise the benefits of the additional patient information available at the point of care. This includes supporting clinical decision-making, improving efficiencies and reducing workload burdens.

Key to this was helping staff rethink the clinical record – not just focusing on what they can see and record within their own organisation but considering the wider patient record. This approach supports more joined-up working, reduces the risk of duplication and errors, and improves the patient’s experience of care.

What Was Involved?

2023 was all about planning! We developed detailed plans, secured support from senior managers, and obtained project approval and funding from our Leadership Team.

We then began raising awareness of the project by offering briefings at key meetings, sending emails to staff, producing introductory leaflets, and using various channels such as divisional newsletters.

The training itself began in January this year. From the outset, we wanted to take a more personal approach rather than relying on videos and self-learning modules.

We recruited a dedicated trainer who worked with a different division each month, adapting plans and content according to each service’s needs. We directed staff to their local health and care providers sharing information into the London Care Record. Tailoring the content of the sessions helped ensure it was more meaningful for different staff groups and covered what was important to them.

We were also flexible in the practical arrangements. By considering simple things like the best times for different teams or how many sessions were needed, we made the training as convenient as possible, boosting attendance. We promoted the idea of teams attending the training together, which encouraged discussions around clinical use cases.

In total, we trained 1,650 staff members across 240 sessions.

What Did You Achieve?

We are absolutely delighted that we more than quadrupled the total views of the London Care Record and HWE Shared Care Record. This achievement happened in just a year and more than doubled the number of staff using the tools.

Focusing on the London Care Record alone, we saw views rise from 6,600 in September 2023 to over 34,000 in July 2024. The number of different staff using it increased from 300 to over 1,000.

But the figures only tell part of the story. For CLCH, the care of the patient and the well-being of our staff are of equal importance. That’s why we wanted to learn more about how using these tools had supported frontline care, saved staff time, and given them more confidence in the care they provide.

A couple of months after each divisional campaign, we conducted a staff survey to delve deeper into these points. We received over 190 overwhelmingly positive responses:

• 96% of staff surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that the shared record allowed them to make better use of their time.
• 99% agreed or strongly agreed that the shared record supported their clinical decision-making.
• 97% agreed or strongly agreed that the shared record improved their confidence and satisfaction in the care they provided.

What Lessons Have You Learned?

For us, the key lessons were securing early buy-in from our leadership team, employing a dedicated trainer, and tailoring sessions around the different CLCH divisions.

Here are our top ten tips for other organisations looking to do something similar.

What Are the Next Steps?

Based on the very positive results of the project, we are delighted that our Programme Board has endorsed the next stage of this important work.

Firstly, we will continue to offer record-sharing training trust-wide for new starters, staff who did not manage to attend the first campaign, and those who want a refresher.

We will maintain communications regarding any updates to the London Care Record and Herts and West Essex Shared Care Record. Staff have been happy to share their experiences of using the shared care record, and we are sharing these stories through trust-wide and divisional communication channels.

We are keen to understand any variance in utilisation and the use cases for the same services across the trust. Through an additional Service Review Project, we are looking at how similar services utilise shared records and whether there are opportunities to share use cases and experiences.

We know there were staff groups with lower attendance at training due to the nature of their roles – e.g. community nurses. We are working hard to understand how best to engage with them through our service reviews and will adapt our approach accordingly. We are keen for more individual users to become confident in accessing the shared record.

We also plan to scope how CLCH services use the Universal Care Plan and see if we can do more to promote its use, ensuring staff understand its importance and the benefits of this vital tool.

We are proud of what we have achieved as a team and how this is already making a positive difference to patient care and staff at CLCH. We look forward to building on this over the year ahead.