Thank You Event 2024: Team of the Year - Highly Commended
Every year we celebrate our amazing staff and their achievements at our Thank You ceremony. Board members will surprise colleagues at their bases and present them with a hamper, balloons and a certificate for being shining examples of our magnificent staff behaviours.
Team of the Year – Highly Commended
Team of the Year – Highly Commended
The Spinal Treatment Service
The Spinal Treatment Service is an amazing team of physiotherapists and admin staff who manage the most complex case load of spinal patients within the Musculoskeletal Service. They are kind, supportive and work together in the true sense of team.
The STS team offer each other emotional support and debriefing when dealing with upsetting or excessively complex cases, advice, clinically sharing of ideas within peer support and regular case review sessions. The advice and discussions are inclusive to all the members of the team and is always open and honest which effectively demonstrates the LCH values. Duty Days help and support staff members to manage any issues.
An essential part of the team are the STS admin staff whom all the clinicians are wholly reliant upon. The admin team support the STS in all aspects of their work and are incredibly hard working and loyal to STS.
The team, whilst maintaining a high caseload of complex spinal patients, regularly share knowledge and information. They have facilitated 6-month mentorship programmes to train less experienced MSK staff members in the management of spinal conditions, improving their confidence and clinical skills. They also routinely train fifth year medical school students to improve their knowledge of spines and practical examination and understanding of spinal pathology. The team are now expanding their support to other services such as Harrogate MSK. They also regularly support staff working within primary care to help manage complex cases.
The team have developed and implemented new pathways, including a new Myelopathy pathway and working with LCH Pain Team and the LTHT Pain Services on an urgent pathway for management of acute spinal injections without MRI for urgent patients where appropriate. This helps with reducing the number of MRI investigations, reducing waiting times and is a better care pathway for urgent patients. A direct referral pathway from A&E has been implemented, reducing workload for primary care, reducing waiting times, improving access and management of spinal patients.
The Spinal team developed MDT meetings and an Urgent Spinal MDT Surgical clinic to reduce times to gain a specialist surgical opinion and intervention for urgent spinal pathologies. This development has been shown to benefit patients, clinicians, primary and secondary care services.
The successful model of MDT and Urgent Spinal MDT Surgical clinic is now being developed in other regional MSK services such as York and Bradford, and in the future Airedale, Wakefield and Huddersfield to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness across the system.
The team were nominated by Nicola Clay, Clinical Head of Service MSK and Pain who added, “I believe that the STS team in MSK truly demonstrate what a team can really accomplish when working together and that they are deserved candidates for the Team of the Year.”
They were presented their award and praised highly by Andrea Osborne, Interim Executive Director of Finance and Resources.
