These are our specific areas of focus for improvement in 2025/2026.
Supporting staff to report incidents and with an enhanced focus on shared learning and systems-based improvements
Building on last year’s improvements we will continue the development of organisational safety culture resulting in improvements in the number of safety incidents recorded and associated flow of learning throughout the organisation, supporting the reduction of harm.
Safer and more effective medicines use
We will concentrate on ensuring patients’ medication lists are updated and accurate when they come into hospital, that medicines are stored safely and reduce waste from medicines returned to pharmacy.
We will increase the number of staff who have medicines management training in line with national standards.
Ensuring mental capacity, best interests decision making and deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLs) are considered appropriately for patients with a learning disability
We will continue to focus on mental capacity assessments and best interest decisions and application of DoLs for patients with a learning disability.
Expanding the Accrediting Excellence (ACE) programme for wards and departments
Through our framework for quality improvement, we will have a clear focus on clinical and professional standards to continue to drive improvement in patient outcomes, patient satisfaction and staff experience. Thirty wards and departments will start the accreditation process over the next 12 months.
Roll-out of the patient experience real time surveys
Following a successful pilot on 14 wards, we want to expand our current programme and capture patient experience feedback from patients while they are still with us in hospital.
This will be rolled out to 40 wards over the next 12 months. In addition, we have welcomed the opportunity to work with partners in the Great North Care Alliance to introduce near real time measurement of the patient experience in emergency care as a joint priority for the year.
Waiting Safely – improving safety for patients who are waiting for treatment
We will focus on patients who are waiting for a total knee replacement, with the aim of optimising their health, before, during and after their operations.
The details of the quality priorities for each of the clinical boards can be found at the end of this document.
