A huge amount of work has taken place at East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EMAS) to develop our organisation and the way we do things. Through all our efforts, we’ve come a very long way from the Care Quality Commission ‘requires improvement’ rating issued back in 2016.
Chief Executive, Richard Henderson said: “It’s nearly five years since we launched the current EMAS Vision and Strategy, summarised as the Big 3: Respond | Develop | Collaborate – and what a five-years it’s been!
“Despite ongoing pressures and challenges, we’ve increased our engagement across the East Midlands with NHS system leads, regulators and commissioners, patients, the media and the public, to evidence the difference we make to our patients, and to use feedback and experiences to progress, develop and learn (our Annual Report and Quality Account publications capture in more detail the work that has taken place over recent years).
“Bearing in mind the changing NHS landscape and significant challenges facing services, our senior leaders have recently met to review our Vision and what our ambitions could look like for the next five years to keep us progressing.
“The people who work with EMAS and those who use our services will have different experiences and feedback to contribute to help us shape what we do over the next five years. Therefore, we’re inviting those who have an interest and want to help us to keep progressing, to contribute their thoughts and ideas in response to our five draft ambition statements.”
Through our engagement we’re keen to hear:
· what these statements mean to you?
· what you think we’re good at now and where we’re making good progress? And,
· where we could do better, and how?
To aid thinking, here are some examples of the types of work and projects EMAS may need to include to achieve each ambition:
1. Outstanding patient care and collaboration
- eg greater integration/connection with NHS 111, primary and community care, Urgent Community Response (UCR);
- role as a sign poster (implement pathways triage in our Emergency Operations Centre) to ensure patient receive most appropriate care;
- new Clinical Strategy with distinct emergency and urgent offers;
- approaches to support clinical conditions on scene.
2. Attractive leading employer
- eg recruiting a more diverse representative workforce;
- focus on staff and volunteer wellbeing;
- focus on career development and portfolio working etc.
3. Equipment, technology, vehicles and facilities
- eg estates and fleet model review to align to new clinical strategy;
- equipment to support clinical innovation;
- electric vehicles and infrastructure.
4. Safe, effective, compassionate care and culture
- how can we continue to deliver compassionate care with new clinical delivery models?
- culture of compassion for staff - links to EMAS values;
- quality improvement training, continued professional development, and efficiency suggestions.
5. Sustainability and reducing health inequalities
- eg sharing our data to inform commissioning;
- Making Every Contact Count (MECC);
- addressing staff inequalities;
- frequent/high volume user plans to support patients and health and social care services.
Why share your thoughts? People who work for and with EMAS, and people who access our services, all have different experiences, therefore your views and ideas are needed if we’re to get our strategy right. It’s important because our EMAS strategy will inform the sub-strategies at EMAS (eg clinical, quality, finance, workforce, IM&T, communications, etc) and will therefore direct where we invest our finances, time, resource and energy.
So please, use this opportunity to get involved, and make things happen by accessing this Microsoft feedback form to share your views before 15 February 2023.
EMAS staff and volunteers are encouraged to visit our weekly internal magazine Enews for details about internal engagement opportunities and to access their feedback forms.