Protecting care providers and patients
Each month we feature an Award-Winning finalist; inspirational individual or team who are really are The Best of the Best in social care. This month we feature Amelia Greenwood, a clinical lead nurse and frontline leader at Local Care Force, who’s innovative projects has resulted in significant improvement in patient safety and experience.
Amelia Greenwood is the Senior Regional Clinical Lead Nurse at Local Care Force – a leading nursing and social care agency in the North of England. With over 22 years of experience, she joined the business after a successful career within the NHS, HC-One, The Priory and Cygnet Healthcare.
Amelia’s passion for her role is clear. She continuously thinks up new and innovative ways to improve the wellbeing of those she supports. In fact, over the last 3 years, she has implemented two award-winning initiatives. Both inspired by her ambition to improve patient care and services by better supporting staff.
‘Agency Nurses: Protect Yourselves; Protect Your Patients’ was developed when Amelia recognised that agency nurses didn’t experience the same level of support or opportunities to learn as permanent staff. This was highlighted, at the 2015 RCN Job Fair, when a survey of 143 nurses (not registered with Local Care Force) revealed that:
- 38% didn’t feel supported
- 60% felt isolated
- 37% didn’t feel safe
- 40% felt they didn’t get a full explanation of their placement
Amelia decided to create a unique programme that would allow excellence in clinical care to flourish – by providing Specialist Continuing Professional Development, access to tangible resources and ongoing clinical support.
As a result of her programme, untoward incidents reduced from 8.3 to 4.8 per month (a 42% reduction) and, when Local Care Force nurses were surveyed in 2017 and 2019…
- 99% felt part of a team
- 98% felt supported
- 98% felt safe and
- 97% felt they received a full explanation of their placement.
As well as developing this initiative, Amelia was hands-on in its delivery, providing revalidation support, 1:1 clinical and managerial supervision and group support sessions covering a range of subjects – from clinical skills to specialist mental health training. This project has now been further developed to include all care and support staff.
Amelia’s second campaign ‘Address your Stress’ followed shortly after. She knew that to effectively provide support, care providers need to take care of their own mental health.
1 in 4 people experience mental health difficulties and 95% of stress-related sickness is believed to be reported under a different reason, largely due to stigma. Amelia was passionate to make sure this wasn’t the case at Local Care Force, so she introduced a bespoke, stress and mental health awareness programme.
It focused on how to support colleagues to spot the signs of stress. Self-help provisions also highlighted how to manage and reduce symptoms. Workplace adjustments were also made, including the introduction of a designated mental health nurse and a mentoring system to ensure there was always someone to talk to. In addition, general wellness benefits, promoting exercise and healthy eating, were introduced, such as free fruit and personal training sessions.
The ‘Address Your Stress’ training generated fantastic results – from lower staff turnover, reduced sickness/absence and stronger and more empathetic teams.
As a result of Amelia’s ongoing efforts, she received numerous accolades, including her recent win at The Great British Care Awards 2019 for Frontline Leader of the year. She was also a finalist in The Nursing Times Awards for Patient Safety Improvement, The HSJ Awards and The NT Workforce Awards – to name but a few.
To top it all off, Amelia’s work was inducted into the RCN’s Library of Best Practice – as the gold standard for agency nursing in the UK – which showcases and celebrates the innovators and pioneers of Nursing.
Amelia is now working on rolling out her initiatives to all businesses, allowing everyone to benefit from improved awareness, better staff support and a higher-quality of patient safety and wellbeing.
