Following a recent review, Newcastle Hospitals’ endoscopy services have achieved JAG accreditation.
The accreditation verified that endoscopy services at Newcastle Hospitals are meeting rigorous, high-quality standards which are used across the UK (and Republic of Ireland) to support improvement of endoscopy services. These standards have been developed by a multi-professional group of clinicians, managers and service users. The accreditation programme is run by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) who are dedicated to improving patient care.
By participating in the JAG programme, we are ensuring that our patients received high quality care throughout our endoscopy services.
In the report assessors commented that endoscopy services “have an inspirational and dynamic leadership team with ardent to reach their goals. The team demonstrates an open and honest culture across all areas from management, administrative and clinical.
“The administrative team have played an inspirational part in managing and tracking waiting times and booking patients appropriately reducing DNA’s. The clinical lead, nursing leads and administrative lead work well together respecting each other’s opinions and exceed expectations with their ongoing development of the service.
“The nursing staff are hardworking and caring and use a primary nursing model of care where the named nurse follows the patient from admission to recovery, this is a well-recognised model that enhances the patient experience with a personal touch which is reflected in the excellent patient feedback. Patient care is enhanced by a well-established pre-assessment service and exceptional communication across departments including decontamination, wards and theatres.”
Christopher Mountford consultant gastroenterologist and clinical director of endoscopy at Newcastle Hospitals said: “We are delighted that our endoscopy services in Newcastle across RVI and Freeman sites have achieved reaccreditation by JAG. JAG accreditation is only awarded to centres which are able to demonstrate continual improvement and the highest standards of patient care across the service. Since the last accreditation site visit 5 years ago, we have worked through one of the most challenging periods in NHS history, so to achieve such high praise of the service by our external assessors was extremely pleasing.
“We received outstanding feedback on patient experience as well as clinical quality within the service, leadership and support of our workforce including training. We welcome the recommendations for further improvements to the service and we will be working on incorporating these into our service strategy and annual plan.
“As clinical director of the service, I am incredibly proud of the teams within endoscopy for this achievement. I see the commitment and passion all our staff put into their role to deliver the best care possible each occasion for the many thousands of patients who have investigations with us each year. It was pleasing to see this recognised by our assessors who commented in their report that “the service aims to ‘put patients at the centre of what we do’ and this was evident throughout the visit. This level of outstanding commitment to patient care should be congratulated and is evidence of all staff working as a team demonstrating an embedded culture throughout the whole team.”
At Newcastle hospitals we have endoscopy units at both the RVI and Freeman hospitals – the service provides specialist screening for the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of disorders affecting the digestive system.
Our experienced team of medial and nursing specialists carry out over 17,000 endoscopic procedures every year. Newcastle Hospitals is also the only trust in the north east to regularly carry out certain highly specialist procedures, including certain advanced pancreaticobiliary endoscopic therapeutic interventions.
For more information on the JAG programme, please visit https://www.thejag.org.uk/
