Quality Strategy 2026-2029

By 2029, our Quality Strategy will help us deliver safer, more effective and more equitable care by focusing on four priorities: Safe, Effective, Experience and Health Inequalities. Our aim is simple — to reduce avoidable harm, improve outcomes, strengthen how care feels for patients and staff, and make sure every community we serve is treated fairly.

We will measure our progress through clear indicators for each priority, such as fewer incidents of harm, shorter waits and stays, better patient‑reported outcomes, improved staff experience, and meaningful reductions in health inequalities. These will be tracked through our Quality Governance Framework so we can see where we are making a difference.

By 2029, patients, families and colleagues will see real improvements: safer care built on strong fundamentals, smoother and quicker pathways, more personalised and compassionate experiences, and a fairer system where everyone has the chance to thrive.

As Executive Sponsor, I am proud to support this Quality Strategy and I am fully committed to making sure we deliver the improvements our patients, staff and communities deserve.

Sam Westwell

Chief Nurse, Allied Health Professionals and Midwifery Officer

This Quality Strategy is our shared direction for how we will keep improving care, with clear priorities that our teams turn into detailed plans. It sets out what we want to achieve from 2026 to 2029, focusing on four main areas: Safe, Effective, Experience, Health Inequalities.

Our strategy is shaped by a promise to work together to focus on what our patients, colleagues and communities need most. It is supported by our Trust values — Caring, Safe, Respectful — and aims to build a culture where everyone can help make things better, using ideas that we know work (evidence), learning from patients and colleagues, and everyone working in the Trust taking responsibility for their part (accountability). Each priority has a named Executive and a senior Priority Lead. They will work with our teams to explain what we will do (aims and scope), agree who will do the work, set measures, and keep track of progress.

We built this plan over a number of months. We used the feedback people had already shared about our services, as well as ideas and priorities from NHS teams across the country and our region. We talked with local communities, partners, patients, carers and families to agree what matters to them. We also worked with groups who know our organisation well and see how it fits into the wider NHS. Together with colleagues across Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre, we helped shape what this plan should be.

We know that improving quality is not something you do once — it’s something you keep working on. Our reason is simple: we want to give every patient the best care we can, every time. To do this, we keep learning, changing and trying to do better.

How we work, guided by our values

This strategy is built on our values. These values — Caring, Safe and Respectful — help us make good choices every day. They are not just words. We show them in how we talk to each other, how we lead our teams, and how we focus on what matters most to our patients and staff.

Our Values

• Caring: We are open and honest, support each other, and show kindness to everyone.
• Safe:  We do our jobs well, keep learning, and take responsibility for keeping people safe.
• Respectful: We treat everyone as an individual and with dignity. We listen, we are fair, and we speak honestly.

How do we improve?

Sometimes we know exactly what needs to get better, but the reality of making those changes can be really difficult. That’s why we use quality improvement methods – simple, structured ways of understanding a problem, testing ideas, and seeing whether the changes we make lead to improvement.  We call this QI, which is short for Quality Improvement. 

A QI approach is how we will deliver our strategy.  It gives us simple steps to see what the problem is, try out ideas and check if they made things better. 

To do this, we need a culture where everyone helps to make improvements.

We will:

• Give colleagues tools and training so they know how to make things better.
• Make it easier for people to share ideas and try new ways of working.
• Celebrate what goes well and learn from things that do not go to plan, without blaming anyone.

A QI approach helps us make real changes. It starts with understanding the problem, agreeing what needs to get better, and choosing the best ideas to try. Teams from different roles work together, listen to each other, and use evidence to guide what they do.

We learn as we go. We check our progress often, fix problems quickly, and share what we learn with others. This helps everyone feel confident to try out their ideas in their day‑to‑day work. We want everyone to feel able to make things better when they spot something that could be improved.

QI Training

Our QI training gives colleagues the skills and confidence to make improvements in their own areas of work. It teaches simple tools to help us to work out problems, test ideas and see whether changes have made things better. Through programmes like Quality Service Improvement and Redesign (QSIR), colleagues will learn practical, everyday methods they can use to improve care, support their teams, and help deliver our strategy.

Collaboratives and Communities of Practice

We bring people together through collaboratives and communities of practice so they can learn from each other and work on the same problems. These groups make improvement feel fun and inspiring, because people share ideas, try out small changes, and celebrate what goes well. We also work with patients, carers and families, so we can work out what matters most to them and use their ideas to help shape better care. By meeting regularly and learning together, teams can spread good ideas across the Trust and feel more enjoyment in their work as they see real improvements happening.

The human side of change

“Human Factors” is about understanding how people really work every day in busy, complex places like hospitals and in the community. It helps us see that mistakes often happen not because someone isn’t trying, but because the systems, processes or environments they work in make things harder. By looking at how we design our work, the tools we use, and the spaces around us, we can make care safer, easier and more reliable.

To support this, we will create a new Human Factors Hub for the Trust. This Hub will bring together the latest thinking in Human Factors and give staff the time, space and support to learn how to apply it in practice. It will build on the strong foundations already in our Simulation and Skills Centre but take us further — offering a clear training strategy, expert coaching, practical tools and a programme of development for teams across the organisation.

The Hub will help create the right conditions for our staff to work out why things go wrong, what gets in the way of safe care, and how small changes can make a big difference. By growing this ability across the Trust, we will strengthen our safety culture and support staff to spot problems early, design better systems, and improve care every day.

Learning from research to improve care

As part of our Quality Strategy, we will strengthen our partnership with Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Clinical Research Centre so that research becomes a core part of how we learn, improve and deliver care. By involving research colleagues in our priority workstreams, using real‑world evidence to see what works, and supporting colleagues to take part in research activity, we will build a culture where new ideas are tested, learning is shared, and improvement is driven by the best available knowledge. This will help us deliver safer, more effective and fair care — and make sure our organisation continues to be a place where innovation (new ideas) thrive and future healthcare is shaped.

The Safe priority is about making sure our patients are protected from harm.  This will focus on reducing avoidable harm and preventable deaths.  We will do this by planning for safety, checking how things are working, and learning every day so we can make care safer for everyone.

We will turn what we learn into action. When something goes wrong, we will look at it carefully using the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and our own audit checks. This helps us see what happened and what needs to change, so we can keep making care safer for everyone.

Fundamentals of care for our patients

When someone comes to hospital, or they are looked after in the community, we want them to be kept safe from harm.   

In our Trust, we know there are some important basics we must get right every day to keep patients safe. These basics are called our Fundamentals of Care. They help us make sure every patient gets safe, personal, high‑quality care, today and every day.  By focusing on these essential things, we build a strong foundation for excellent care across the Trust.

To achieve this, we will build on earlier work to deliver focused and measurable improvement activities, giving individuals and teams the skills, support, and structure they need to make meaningful, measurable progress.

The Fundamentals of Care programme includes:

• Personalised care: We make sure each patient gets care that fits their needs, choices and circumstances, so they feel listened to and supported.
• Putting patients at the centre: We involve patients and families when planning care and respect what matters most to them.
• Clear leadership: Each of the improvement areas below has a named lead who is responsible for guiding improvement, checking progress and reporting through our governance processes.
• Equipping our teams: Colleagues get the right training (including QI), resources and support to give high‑quality care. 
• Using best practice every day: Colleagues follow simple, evidence‑based steps for all core care tasks.
• Learning from feedback: Using the Blackpool Safety Barometer and other metrics, we will look at audits, patient feedback and other information to see what is working and what needs to improve.

Here are the improvement areas for providing the fundamental care:

• Personalised care for all patients, including help for those with learning disabilities, dementia or delirium
• Patient experience
• Excellent nutrition and hydration
• Reducing falls
• Reducing pressure ulcers
• Improved pain management
• Safe management of medicines
• Recognising and responding to the acutely unwell patient
• Infection prevention and control
• End of life care

Each of the Fundamentals of Care improvement areas will have its own outcome measure. 

As a result of this work, we would expect to see a reduction in the number of incidents with harm and a reduction in serious incidents.

The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and learning from patient safety events

The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) is the way we learn from patient safety incidents and improve care. When a mistake happens, we talk with those involved, look at what happened, and change how we work so it doesn’t happen again.

As a Trust, we have looked closely at the four main aims of the PSIRF framework and are working to make these a normal part of how we learn and improve. These aims are:

• Being compassionate and involving people who are affected by patient safety incidents.
• Using different ways to learn from what has happened
• Responding in a fair and sensible way, based on what the situation needs – we call this a “proportionate response”.
• Making sure we guide and support teams, so the whole safety system works well and keeps getting better

Reporting incidents helps us keep learning and improving. With PSIRF, some incidents are grouped by themes to help us improve safety, instead of being looked at one by one. A variety of learning responses are used to identify how we can learn from both great practice and where changes are required. We aim to include all those involved, colleagues, patients, and families where possible.

When an incident happens, we will always pause to ask, “How safe are we today?” This helps us make sure we have taken the immediate actions needed to stop the same harm happening again — protecting both patients and colleagues right away. We will also look at what the incident tells us about the wider system, so we can track the effect of our changes over time. By checking both our quick actions and our longer‑term improvements, we make sure safety keeps getting stronger every day.

We also use learning forums and simple ways for colleagues to give feedback, so we can collect, learn and share lessons from patient safety events.

Our approach to PSIRF puts people first. We always involve and support patients, families and colleagues who are affected when a mistake happens. By being open, fair and honest, we are creating a place where colleagues feel safe to speak up about concerns and report incidents without fear of blame.

As well as reporting incidents, we will ask colleagues to use our excellence reporting system to tell us about the good care they see every day. We can learn just as much from what goes well, as we can when things go wrong. By doing this, and by linking excellence reporting with our improvement work, we can understand what helps good care to happen more often.

Stop the Line

We will use a “Stop the Line” approach that lets any member of staff pause what they are doing and speak up straight away if they see something that could be unsafe. This helps us act quickly to stop harm from happening and build a strong safety culture. We will give all colleagues the skills and confidence to use Stop the Line, and our leaders will support this every day, making sure safety always comes first and everyone knows their voice matters.

Everyone who uses our services wants to be seen quickly and get the best results possible. Effective Care means giving treatments that are proven to work, so every patient gets the best outcome we can give. It is about using strong evidence, learning from what works well and what doesn’t, and making sure patients get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. This helps us reduce differences in how care is delivered and ensures high‑quality care is given across all our services.

Right Patient, Right Place, Right Time

This means making sure people get the help they need as soon as possible, in the place that is best for their care. We will use simple, clear pathways to guide patients to the right service, cut down delays and waiting, and make moving between home, teams and departments smoother and safer. We call this “flow” — it means patients move smoothly through their care, getting the right help at the right time without delays.

We will build on our “Reducing Time Away from Home” improvement work to make sure that when we look after patients in hospital, they get the care they need and can return home safely and without delays. 

Best clinical outcomes

We want every patient to get the best results from their care. Our Trust is made up of three divisions. Each division is a large part of the Trust that brings together teams providing similar types of services. This helps us make sure people get the right care from the right experts.

To achieve the best results for patients, each division will use the latest evidence and proven ways of working. We will check how well we are doing through regular reviews, comparing our results with others, and learning from feedback so we keep improving.

We will also make better use of patient‑reported outcome measures (PROMs) to learn what matters most to patients and how well treatments work. We will collect feedback often and use it to improve our services, working closely with patients, families and carers.

The Experience priority recognises that high‑quality care depends not only on clinical excellence but also on the way people feel when they are given or when they deliver care.

Patients and staff have a better experience when they feel listened to, respected, informed and supported. This priority focuses on the emotional and human side of care, making sure compassion, clear communication and good relationships are at the heart of everything we do.

When staff feel valued and involved, they can care better for patients. This starts a positive cycle where everyone’s experience and results improve. As we focus more on patient and staff experience, we are guided by the idea that “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” This means everyone has a responsibility to notice, speak up about and help fix poor behaviour, practice or environments, because if we ignore them, they can quickly become normal.

The Experience priority is shaped around Our Patients and Our Staff and will define what good experience should look and feel like across the Trust. 

Our patients

We are committed to seeing every patient as an individual with their own needs, preferences and values. This means involving people in decisions about their care, making sure care plans show what matters most to them, and creating an environment where patients, families and carers feel confident, informed and reassured.

To make sure our services truly meet local needs, we will strengthen how we listen to and involve patients, families, carers and community groups. Through regular feedback, forums, surveys, co‑design and QI activities, we will make sure lived experience directly shapes how care is delivered and improved.

Learning from patient experience

Patient experience — and the stories people share — gives us powerful clues about how care really feels. By collecting, understanding and sharing these experiences often and in a meaningful way, we can highlight what is going well and spot where we need to improve. This helps us keep the patient voice at the center of learning and change.

We will look closely at themes from the Friends and Family Test such as emotional support, physical comfort and waiting times, and use this feedback to make care better for everyone.

Improved experience for people living with dementia

While we are committed to personalised care for everyone, we know we must place a special focus on dementia care across our hospital and community services. We will improve the experience of people living with dementia by creating calmer, clearer and more supportive environments, and by using personalised approaches that show what matters most to each person.

We will make sure colleagues have the skills and confidence to meet specific needs and to work closely with families and carers, making reasonable adjustments whenever needed. This is an important part of our promise to providing safe, kind and person‑centered care for everyone.

Improved experience for people receiving end of life and bereavement care

We will improve the experience of people receiving end‑of‑life and bereavement care by ensuring care is compassionate, dignified, and aligned with what matters most to each individual and their family.

Our staff

Fundamentals of Care for Our People

We want to be a more caring organisation for our staff by listening to what matters to them, acting on their needs, and creating a workplace where everyone feels safe, valued, supported and treated with kindness.

We will work with colleagues to design their own “Fundamentals of Care – for our People” so we can create a safe,happy, healthy and productive workforce. By asking staff, “What matters to you?”, we will co‑design an improvement programme that responds to the key challenges in each team or department. We will also create Trust‑wide groups to work on themes that affect many parts of the organisation.

Restorative resilience

We will start a pilot to support staff working in emotionally or personally demanding roles. This programme will help people to build their natural resilience and feel more able to cope with daily pressures. By supporting staff in this way, we aim to improve wellbeing and help people stay healthy, confident and able to keep on delivering great care.

What will Divisions do to improve experience?

Each Division will think about learning from the annual staff survey, pulse surveys and other local feedback to decide the most important actions to improve staff experience. By bringing together formal feedback with what teams hear every day, Divisions will be able to focus on the issues that matter most to their people and create targeted actions that support a happier, healthier and more productive workplace.

By focusing on these priorities, we aim to build an inclusive and supportive experience where both patients and staff feel heard, respected and engaged, leading to better experiences and results for everyone.

We want everyone to have excellent care, no matter who they are or where they come from. This means making it easier for people to use our services, communicating clearly, treating everyone fairly, and giving extra help to people who may need more support. Reducing health inequalities is a key part of providing high‑quality, person‑centred care. We recognise that inequalities also exist within our workforce. We will work with colleagues with expertise to see how health inequalities affect our people — for example through access to support, health outcomes, or digital skills.  

We will look closely at our information to spot unfair differences in care and how they change over time. This will help us see what needs to be done, check if things are improving and make good decisions about where to focus our work.   

As well as priority improvement initiatives, the Quality Strategy positions Health Inequalities as a golden thread running through every workstream and improvement programme.

Fundamentals of care for our population

We want to improve the health and wellbeing of our population by working with our communities, families, carers, and system partners to learn what matters most to them. By listening to people’s experiences and the challenges they face in accessing or navigating care, we can design services that are fair, consistent and meet the needs of everyone in Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre.

We will work with partners across the Integrated Care System to co‑design a shared set of “Fundamentals of Care – for our Population”. These principles will set out the essential things our population should expect from us — clear information, equal access, fair treatment, removal of discrimination and stigma – providing care that reflects their culture, background and circumstances. By asking our communities “What matters to you?”, we will start an improvement programme that responds to the biggest health inequality challenges in each area.

Health and digital literacy: everyone can access and understand the information they need  

We will make sure our information is easy for everyone to understand, no matter what language they speak, how confident they feel about reading health information, or what their background is. We will also ask patients and families for feedback to check that our communication is clear, helpful, and works well for them.

Some people are unable to use online digital services, and this can make getting help unfair. We will work across the whole Trust to make sure our information is easy to understand and use, whether people are online or not. We will also make our digital tools simpler and give extra support to those who need it - including people who rely on carers, have little internet access, or find technology difficult. This means our digital work will help everyone, not just those who find it easy.

What will Divisions do to reduce health inequalities?

We will help our staff learn more about health inequalities and how they affect people. Staff will learn simple ways to spot when someone needs extra help and how to feel confident to give the right support. This will help us build a caring, kind and inclusive culture, where every patient and every family feel valued and treated fairly.

Each Division will find out the health inequalities affecting the people they serve — whether related to access, communication, outcomes, digital exclusion, or the needs of specific vulnerable groups — and develop clear, targeted actions to improve.

The Quality Strategy Executive Sponsor is the Chief Nurse, Allied Health Professionals and Midwifery Officer.

Each of the four priorities detailed within this strategy has an accountable lead (executive and operational) as detailed in Appendix A. They will work with stakeholders to develop aims, driver diagram, measurement and delivery plans.  In Appendix B you will find examples of measures that we can look at to show the changes we make are leading to improvement.

The priorities will report through the Trust sub-groups relating to their focus.  Oversight of the full Quality Strategy will be through Quality Assurance Committee and Board of Directors.

To make sure that all colleagues are committed to the success of our Quality Strategy, there will be standardised levels of monitoring and reporting starting from Divisions.

Link with annual quality accounts

The priorities outlined in this strategy will guide our annual quality accounts. The Trust will continue to update its quality account in our public facing website. The Trust’s Quality Accounts, and the process that accompanies them, is key for delivering this strategy and maintaining stakeholder involvement.

These are our first ideas about how we might measure this work. They are not fixed, and we may change them as we learn more. We will test these measures, listen to feedback, and update them so they help us understand what is improving and where we need to do more.