Respiratory care staff at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) are eyeing glory after being short-listed for the prestigious Nursing Times Awards 2015.

The Trust’s Respiratory Support Team (RST) has been recognised for its co-ordinated and innovative approach to patient care and communication – making the final nine in the Respiratory Nursing category.

Led by consultant respiratory physician Dr Simon Gompertz, the team devised a treatment ‘bundle’ for all chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) admissions.

The GP Commissioners were keen to develop this further and University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) agreed to a Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) project to support this.

CQUIN’s involve certain targets having to be met in a given timescale, with funding at stake if they are not - £1 million in this particular case for a 12-month project.

With the pressure on, the RST, with the help of various other departments in the Trust, set about making several innovations to improve their service.

The ‘bundle’ has been successfully integrated into the Trust’s electronic Prescribing Information and Communications System (PICS). As a result RST nurses and physiotherapists are automatically alerted by mobile phone whenever a new patient is prescribed COPD drugs and can get to the bedside quicker.

A safe discharge checklist for COPD patients was also devised and an awareness programme run by the RST for respiratory ward nurses to ensure that, at the time of discharge, all patients are guided through the list and understand it.

All of this information is now quickly made available electronically to GPs along with a patients’ discharge letter to help with follow-up care.

“The bundle is something that we have done for a long time and we knew it was important for us and helped to reduce re-admissions,” said clinical specialist physiotherapist Rachael Colclough.

“But we wanted to have that in some sort of electronic form. We were previously filling out a paper version, taking that up to our secretary, who was then faxing it to the GP. It was a really laborious process.

“The CQUIN is all about quality of patient care, which we felt we were providing, but we were lacking in joining that up with the community because of the paperwork,” she added.

“The really novel parts are the automatic alerts for RST staff when a patient is admitted and getting that vital electronic integration of our bundle. It’s a more efficient, robust way of working and felt like we really were improving our service.

“We are a small team but we achieved 100 per cent of the targets, which is really spectacular, and we felt very proud of what we had done. A lot of backroom work, especially from the PICS and informatics teams, has gone into making this work.”

The team will now make a presentation to judges in September, followed by an anxious wait before the winners are unveiled at a gala awards night at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on November 12.