Royal Derby Hospital teams celebrate vital work to streamline patient care
Colleagues from the Medical Assessment Unit (MAU), Surgical Assessment Unit (SAU) and Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) teams at Royal Derby Hospital recently came together to celebrate their success in relocating and reconfiguring their services to support the continuing delivery of exceptional care during winter pressures.
Working collaboratively, the three teams undertook what is thought to be one of the largest relocations that has taken place at the Trust - planning extensively to ensure this did not affect patient care while it took place.
As a result of their hard work and the success of the relocation, Chief Executive Stephen Posey chose the teams as the winners of a CEO Making a Difference Award, highlighting his gratitude for their commitment.
The relocation took place over 48 hours, with 120 bed and triage spaces all being relocated during this time. This involved the three teams collaborating with a range of colleagues to support the move - with medicine and surgery managers, senior sisters, nursing teams, estates and facilities management staff, IT teams, and many more - to ensure there was no disruption to patients.
The move has also allowed the departments to develop their services in several ways. SDEC capacity has been increased, with over 100 patients seen a day on average - avoiding emergency admissions, and allowing patients to return home instead of being admitted to hospital - releasing bed space in the process. As well as this, MAU has been able to re-introduce triage, the Frail Elderly Assessment Team (FEAT) has been incorporated into SDEC services to provide a 'full picture' of assessment of some of our patients, and both the MAU and SAU have been able to return to the areas the occupied before they moved during the pandemic in 2020.
Emma Mitchell, Senior Sister at SDEC, described how the relocation allows the three teams to improve patient outcomes: "The new process is a lot 'slicker'. We pull in the expertise of others where needed in a short space of time, work closely together with each other to work out who is best placed to care for a patient, and overall, provide all the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle and get the patient treated, and back home as soon as we can while making sure they're getting the most effective care. 
"The benefit of being so close together now is, if we've got someone with a medical concern, that turns out to be a surgical concern, then it's just a case of taking them from one department to another and asking the right person for the right advice and identifying where they need to be - and in the process, stops them from attending A&E."
Julie Ann Whitehorn, who works on medical SDEC,: "I've worked as a nurse for over 30 years and I always say this is just my job - so I feel a bit shocked!
"We do recognise this takes a lot of work from everybody, but it's really nice to be applauded like this when you've just followed the same intent you've always had - to put our patients first.
"I always think, 'how would you want a family member to be treated'? You nurse from the heart in that way, and lead with empathy - but you look at how you can be best enabled to do that for every single patient who comes through our doors. That's what this move is all about."
Maria Spencer, Quality and Service Improvement Facilitator for Surgery, agreed: "This was all done through teamwork, and for us to be able to have this moment reflect on what we did as a single unit as we did to work together on this feels great.
"This all took place in one weekend, with extra colleagues across our teams and beyond coming into the hospital to make sure we did all this without affecting those currently in our care.
"Whether it was IT services moving equipment, ISS staff cleaning the areas, patients staying within the care of each of our teams being seen earlier - in order to move them to the right place in time for the move, estates staff changing signage, colleagues across our teams coming in when they didn't have to - we all did our bit to make this a success. 
Executive Chief People Officer, Amanda Rawlings, presented the award on behalf of Stephen Posey, as they all reflected on all the hard work it took to ensure it took place smoothly - as well as their pride in receiving the award.
Chief Executive Stephen Posey was delighted by this 'great achievement' from our teams - saying:
"There was an incredible amount of work that went into the relocation of both the Medical and Surgical Assessment Units and SDEC.
"Exceptional care for our patients will always remain at the forefront of what we do, and I am very grateful to the teams for their hard work and extensive planning in the weeks leading up to the relocation. This ensured that our patients were not impacted during the 48 hours in which the relocation took place.
"Not only has our capacity increased as a result of this move, but new services have also been introduced within the department - and this highlights the power of teams working together to improve patient experience."