Communities of Practice – sharing knowledge, learning and support
Earlier this year, representatives from Communities of Practice across the six East Midlands Provider Partners came together to deliver interactive workshops and presentations for a learning event on ‘Caring Together – Improving Safety Through Experiences’, which was attended by over 80 delegates.
Communities of Practice (CoP) are networks of professionals that share common goals or interests and provide sources of knowledge, learning and support. Our East Midlands Alliance CoPs include:
Improving sexual safety
This Community of Practice aims to improve sexual safety on wards in mental health, learning disability and autism services. It is co-chaired by Sarah Jones, Patient Safety Lead at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Lynn Nyadzayo, Ward Matron at Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. This CoP is working towards improving awareness of the importance of sexual safety, focusing on supporting openness about sexual safety, relationships and sexual behaviours.
Reducing restrictive practice
This Community of Practice aims to enable a trauma-informed approach to reducing restrictive practices, which are clinical interventions used when there is a perceived risk of harm to restrict or limit what an individual can do or where they can go. It is co-chaired by Emily Binding, Trust Lead for Reducing Restrictive Practice at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and Rob Kerr from Leicestershire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. This CoP is working towards developing best practice guidance for seclusion, which will then lead to a more specific focus on improving debriefs in inpatient services.
Preventing suicide and self harm
This Community of Practice aims to prevent suicide and self-harm by delivering quality care and experience for people in mental health settings across the East Midlands. It is co-chaired by Rachel Lees, Trust Lead for Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and Lisa Pearson, Trust-wide Suicide Prevention Lead at Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
The EMA learning event, which was hosted in partnership with Health Innovation East Midlands, gave the CoPs an opportunity to showcase their excellent work and have compassionate conversations and collaborate on important topics to enable shared learning. All the outputs from the workshops will be used by the Communities of Practice to continue to drive forward their improvement programmes.