Quality Improvement in CAMHS

CNWL Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in London and Milton Keynes met for a half day on 28 September to share QI learning from their projects, and think about spreading the good work as well as lessons learned.

Nearly 60 staff attended to hear about the principles of how to effectively use the QI approach to disseminate practice improvement.

Four teams presented projects on areas of concern for all CAMHS Teams including:

• Improving patient flow and treatment access in the Emotional Disorder Team at Hillingdon CAMHS Hugo Madden (Hillingdon CAMHS)
• CAMHS ADHD Pathway Improvement Clara Muzira (Milton Keynes CAMHS) 
• Brent CAMHS’ Quality Improvement Journey :from Decreasing Waiting Time to Reducing Impact of Meeting the Referral to Treatment metric on Staff  Louise Morganstein (Brent CAMHS)        
• Happy Documentation Project: reducing time taken for initial assessments  Claire Firth (K&C CAMHS)

Read the slide deck.

Dr Tami Kramer, the QI Lead in CAMHS, said: “We need to spread the excellent innovations and learn from each other, it lifts staff morale to see that change is possible and meaningful; QI provides the opportunity to give time to understanding our problems in detail and finding solutions.”

“It was good to learn about innovation in real world services facing serious challenges; yet able to make a measurable difference for patients (such as earlier access to assessments and treatments, freeing-up clinician time from admin for clinical work and focus on monitoring and supporting staff wellbeing.)”

“QI methodology -  as a vehicle to engage frontline staff to identify and understand the most important problems and then think innovatively about creative solutions – is really helpful. Using data shows what makes a difference.”

“Covid/Post-Covid pressures, with an exponential rise in referral numbers, increased the challenge, but staff commitment and determination has kept the QI work going.”

Comments from attenders:

• Thanks to all the presenters, it has been very useful to learn from your experiences!
• Thanks to everyone for making such an interesting event happening
• Excellent morning, thank you to organisers and presenters, brilliant work going on!
• Hearing about all of these great projects has improved my wellbeing!
• Amazing learning space thank you all!

Dr Simon Edwards Medical Director, Diggory Division and CNWL’s Clinical lead for our QI Academy said; “this event, which was well attended, shared some great QI work in CAMHS with amazing outcomes across six services all planning to learn from each other.”