Oxford Healthcare Improvement Centre’s aim is to improve patient safety and the quality of care through a programme of quality improvement, research, training and collaboration.

We have lots to celebrate in relation to the changes and improvements we have made to the safety of care. Some examples are shared on the OHI website and include:

• Falls prevention within community hospital wards
• Self-harm reduction on our children and adolescent mental health wards
• Improving the electronic healthcare record to be easier to use
• Reducing enhanced observations on the psychiatric intensive care unit

For each of the finished Quality Improvement Projects there is a summary poster published.

The centre has also created quality improvement podcasts, for example on how we are improving occupational therapy care on mental health wards and person-centred care in a community hospital.

Alongside there are also more general podcasts from Professor Charles Vincent, an international expert on patient safety, on:

• why harm and mistakes occur
• how we can learn from these,
• and different ways we can improve patient safety.

The podcasts are available at QI Podcasts.

This year we are focusing our attention on the following Quality Improvement projects:

National projects

• Improving sexual safety on wards
• Ligature harm reduction programme
• Suicide prevention

Wider Trust projects

• Trauma-informed care
• Integration of psychological services
• Risk assessment formulation and documentation
• Measuring success of race equality framework for change
• Working with families
• Positive and safe – reduction in restrictive practice

The projects have informed our Trust-wide Quality Improvement Plan for 2021/22 which is detailed in our annual Quality Account.