Leading Better Care - Delivering for Patients

In December 2010, the Chief Nursing Officer in collaboration with the Scottish Executive Nurse Directors agreed to continue and progress the work of Leading Better Care (LBC), and with the ongoing implementation of Releasing Time to Care (RTC), LBC phase 2 was developed.

LBC - delivering for patients supports Senior Charge Nurses/Midwives (SCN/M's) and Team Leaders (TL's) by providing facilitation, support, development and educational opportunities to help them achieve high quality, person centred safe and efficient care for every patient first time and every time. This is achieved by ensuring there are better processes, effective ways of working, efficient and person centred care that result in more effective use of all resources.

To achieve this vision, the following aims have been agreed.

LBC Aims

All SCNs, SCMs and TLs will be working in the context of the LBC components:

-  To ensure safe and effective clinical practice

-  To enhance the patients experience

-  To manage and develop the performance of the team

-  To ensure effective contribution to the delivery of the organisations objectives

by March 2013 and able to demonstrate this.

Nurses and Midwives will be able to demonstrate the contribution they make to the quality and experience of care that patients receive under the three themes by March 2013:

-  Safe

-  Effective

-  Person centred

This paper provides more details regarding LBC - delivering for patients.

Leading Better Care - incorporating Releasing Time to Care

This report celebrates the excellent work achieve by all NHS boards in the initial implementation phase of LBC. It also includes the benefits demonstrated through the implementation of RTC, as well as the synergy with other NHSScotland programmes of work.

Please click here for an update of all NHS Boards LBC implementation.

For the SCN SCM and Team Leader Education and Development Framework please see the SCN, SCM and Team Leader role section, or click here.

Leading Better Care

Leading Better Care set our two key aims that all NHSScotland boards had to achieve by the end of 2010, were:

1. Senior Charge Nurses (SCN's), Senior Charge Midwifes (SCMs) and Team Leaders (TLs)will be working in the context of the revised role.

2. The majority of in-patient areas to have Clinical Quality Indicators (CQIs) in place.

Leading Better Care - One Year On took place in March 2010 as a celebration of Leading Better Care and ReleasingTime to Care.

LBC/RTC briefing paper September 2010 - this paper highlights the current successes of both programmes, as well as highlighting the key elements of integration and synergy with other NHSScotland programmes of work, the challenges and ongoing implications.

If you would like any further information on Leading Better Care, please contact Vicky Thompson, National Lead on 07920 765 343.

Releasing Time to Care is a key integrated partner of Leading Better Care

Releasing Time to Care (RTC) focuses on improving processes and environments to help nurses and therapists spend more time on patient care, thereby improving safety and efficiency.

As its name implies, RTC is about helping nurses and therapists to release the time they have to do what they do best - deliver patient/client care - more often and more effectively. It was born in the light of research that showed nurses tended to spend less than half of their working time on direct patient care and the consequent realisation that the main tasks had to be redesigned to make them more patient-focused and less time-consuming for staff to complete.

In November 2011, the management and co-ordination of RTC moved to Healthcare Improvement Scotland. For further information please visit www.releasingtimetocare.scot.nhs.uk.