15 March 2023

The Hillingdon Hospital’s (THH) Discharge Hub has been working with two nurses from CNWL to ‘bridge the gaps’ between acute care at the hospital and the onward care patients receive either in their own home or a community facility.

From shared learning of incidents, gaps were identified in skills and knowledge related to the community resources and a short project was funded by CNWL.  

This has provided another opportunity to enhance patients experience and deliver safe, high-quality discharges at Hillingdon through collaborative working.

CNWL’s Elizabeth Coleman, a District Nurse, and her colleague Erika Ayling, a Diabetes Specialist Nurse, have been embedded within the teams at THH for more than a week, looking into ways to improve the patient experience during transition and prevent delayed discharge or immediate re-admission.

Erika said: “This has been a great project to get involved with – eye-opening, at times challenging but really worthwhile. We’ve identified areas for improvement, seen problems we can rectify and passed on advice and guidance.

“It’s been wonderful working with our colleagues from Hillingdon and I’m confident the project will lead to real improvements in patient care.”

Erika and Elizabeth have worked closely with ward teams and all parts of the discharge process, delivering training and distributing information packs, which teams can use to help them to make safe, timely onward discharges, with all the paperwork and processes completed.

Elizabeth said: “It’s very rewarding to hear the colleagues you’ve been training using their learning in the conversations they are having in real-life patient discharge situations.”

The project runs to the end of March 2023, when its impact will be reviewed.

Picture: Elizabeth Coleman, left, and Erika Ayling with the information packs they supply to ward teams.