Hello – my name is Sarah Watson and I am an Improvement Facilitator in the Newcastle Improvement team. Our role is to support improvement in the Trust.
Improvement is really just change that makes things better for patients and for staff.
We support improvement by working with teams and use an approach that is based on improvement methodology.
We also offer advice and support to teams so they can lead changes that are important to them in their own areas.
The team is made up of staff from many backgrounds including finance, performance, research, NMAHPs and more!
My journey into NHS Improvement
I started work as an Occupational Therapist back in 2002, joining the Newcastle Hospitals straight from University.
My most recent clinical role was within major trauma rehabilitation which gave me even more opportunity to focus on quality improvement as it involved setting up a brand-new service which constantly evolved.
Quality Improvement (QI) took the forefront during covid with rapid changes to the service and review to make sure we were still meeting the patient’s needs.
I really enjoyed the process of QI and continued to apply this to other areas such as our out-patients clinic.
I joined Newcastle Improvement in a seconded role looking at what else I could learn to improve the service for patients and staff.
Once in this role I knew I wanted to know more and that focussing on QI in the whole organisation and learning so much about the Trust really inspired me to want to do this permanently and when the opportunity came up my decision was already made.
Why I love my job
The variety of the role and being able to work across all directorates can be exciting. Being able to see the impact of the work on teams and the positive outcome when they can improve a process or outcome.
The benefit of our role as QI experts being able to coach teams through a project and providing training to give them the knowledge to start a project but to also come back to us for further facilitation.
Often we can begin some work with teams where they think they have the solution for a problem but by teaching them how to take a QI approach and that it can be used in any situation.
Going forward I would love to see QI having an impact on everyone’s daily work and it start being the way we do things here and change the culture.
Contact us
Quality improvement can be applied to any situation and the Newcastle Improvement team are available to support anyone.
If you have an idea for making quality improvements we would love to hear from you.
