Thank You Event 2024: Team of the Year - Winner
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 – Winner
Community Cardiac Service
The multidisciplinary team of Nurses, Case Support Workers, Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists believe passionately in the benefits to the people they care for and their families. There is never a complacency about the incredible work – there is a culture of ‘this is great – how can we make it even better’. The team have pioneered several initiatives in Leeds to promote the highest standards of care and embedded the most up to date evidence for heart failure patients.
The team receives approximately 400 referrals a month. The aim is to deliver care that is personalised to the individual and providing more choice in accessing healthcare. To do this effectively, appointments are offered in a flexible manner via phone, video and face to face at either a clinic setting or at home, responding to patient needs and preferences. High-quality care with less face-to-face consultations is ensured, due to the home BP loan scheme, which the team have embraced. Home BP loans also enable rapid optimisation which improves prognosis for people living with heart failure.
The Cardiac Activity Programme Team, headed by Physiotherapists work hard to offer a personalised exercise plan for each patient. In line with national guidelines, they have increased the numbers of patients that can be offered cardiac rehabilitation and improved patients’ quality of life.
The team developed a Health Equity Champions Group to promote awareness and reasonable adjustments to tackle health inequalities. The Cardiac Team also presented at a national conference to highlight the positive ways they have adapted communication templates and developed easy read patient information to better offer care to all.
The team support new doctors, matrons, home ward and palliative care teams through providing education sessions and sharing knowledge to benefit the patient – and are always keen to work collaboratively to improve care.
The team have sat on West Yorkshire panels to showcase their work and offer support to those still developing this innovative way of working. The team were also invited by British Society for Health Failure (BSH) to attend an NHS England event to promote heart health and increase awareness of heart failure as part of the ‘25 in 25 Project’ by BSH.
In her nomination, Bev Calvert, Clinical Lead for the Cardiac Service added, “The whole team are dedicated to improving care to people living with heart conditions across Leeds. In citywide meetings, the team bring new ideas to discuss to improve our service even further.
We support each other via peer caseload reviews, 1:1, appraisals, morning meetings and regular phone calls – we have 2 mental wellbeing champions who also arrange a ‘no IT coffee hour’ quarterly to enable staff to meet without the hindrance of a laptop to ‘switch off’ for an hour and chat to colleagues."
