Embarking on a journey of excellence, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust recently achieved reaccreditation with IQAS and QPIDS. We spoke with Rebecca Wosley, Quality Manager (Clinical Immunology), to uncover the secrets behind their success.

Keeping the team motivated

The Peninsula Immunology and Allergy Service at Derriford hospital, Plymouth has clinical leads for accreditation for both the adult immunodeficiency and allergy service. Dr Andrew Whyte (Consultant Immunologist and Allergist) is the IQAS lead and Christine Symons (Nurse Consultant) is the lead for QPIDS. When Rebecca started her role as Quality Manager in September 2023, Dr Whyte had already submitted the majority of their evidence for IQAS. Rebecca, along with the accreditation leads, played a pivotal role in keeping everyone motivated, making sure the team understood what accreditation was about and that it is a supportive process. Rebecca commented ‘once everyone understood that assessors don’t come in to try catch you out and viewed it as an opportunity to celebrate what they are already doing, people were happy to support the process and generate the evidence.’

Rebecca carried out the uploads and pulled the information together with the support of the clinical leads – this allowed the clinicians to do what they needed to do and focus on their patients. She feels that this model worked well for their team.

Rebecca commended the team and the work that everyone does; ‘the administrative team are responsible and proactive, which helps to set the foundations for everything else. The nursing team, medics and allied health professionals are wonderful, it’s a first-class team. It was just a case of reminding them that they are already doing excellent work, and this is their opportunity to highlight what they do. It was wonderful, at the end of all the hard work, to spotlight our team’s efforts to the Chief Executive and celebrate our achievements.’

Benefits of the accreditation process

One thing that has been significant for the Plymouth service is that it has grown exponentially since patients first started to be seen in the Eden Day Case Unit. Rebecca commented ‘the number of staff has increased from six to thirty-one and the patient base has grown significantly. Many patients with immunodeficiency have treatments for the rest of their lives so patient numbers increase year on year. This is something that the Trust won’t necessarily see so the accreditation assessment was the perfect opportunity for it to be flagged up by the external assessors. It then meant that the service was able to raise awareness of the fact that they need a bigger space, and that was really one of the only issues across both programmes that required action.’

Rebecca said, ‘It is lovely for patients to know that we are IQAS and QPIDS accredited as it gives them assurance that we are reaching the gold standard. It also encourages good quality staff to want to join our team.’ Rebecca thinks that the accreditation programme is a key part of that because it demonstrates that the department takes quality seriously, and the standards are there to protect the staff as well as patients.

The team’s reaction to the award

‘Absolutely elated! Everybody was delighted to see all their hard work come to fruition. There were some recommendations, which can be expected but it was great that there were no key actions for the service for either IQAS or QPIDS. It was a huge feeling of validation for an extremely hard-working team.’ Rebecca also highlighted that it is a team effort at Plymouth, ‘everyone pulls together, and all do their bit and that's what makes the difference.’

Challenges faced

Rebecca felt that having two external accreditations within 9 months of starting her first role as a quality manager was quite daunting for her personally. Her responsibilities were looking at the evidence and doing a gap analysis to identify where the service was perhaps not meeting the standards. For both IQAS and QPIDS, document control was the biggest challenge, but Rebecca was able to put in place a brand-new document control system and get everything reviewed, branded and uploaded before the inspections started.

Advice for other services

Rebecca emphasised the importance of early planning and maintaining a detailed spreadsheet of standards and evidence. Logging your evidence as you go, knowing what your gaps are and who’s responsible for filling those gaps is vital. The QPIDS and IQAS team are available for any queries and that makes such a difference when people are asking questions – it’s really appreciated.

The IQAS and QPIDS team want to congratulate the service for their hard work and effort throughout 2024 to reach reaccreditation and a big thanks to Rebecca for chatting with me today about their journey.

Chloe Shields

IQAS and QPIDS programme coordinator