Birmingham Children’s Hospital anaesthetists rewarded for high quality patient care
Birmingham Children’s Hospital has been accredited under the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) Anaesthesia Clinical Services Accreditation (ACSA) scheme, demonstrating the Hospital’s commitment to patient safety and excellence of care.
ACSA is the RCoA’s peer-reviewed scheme that promotes quality improvement and the highest standards of anaesthetic service. To receive accreditation, departments are expected to demonstrate high standards in areas such as patient experience, patient safety and clinical leadership.
ACSA lead reviewer, Dr Marie Nixon said:
“The anaesthetic department at Birmingham Children’s Hospital has embraced ACSA for quality improvement with a can-do attitude, with support from hospital management from the department up.
“While the department was providing high quality safe services prior to engaging with ACSA, the process enabled them to identify and address gaps. For example, by rostering a starred consultant free from direct clinical duties as an immediate source of support in emergencies, a trouble-shooter and to improve supervision. And embedding regular in situ multidisciplinary team training to rehearse emergency scenarios and to test systems.
“Congratulations on this well-deserved accreditation.”
Dr Ritchie Marcus, Birmingham Children’s Hospital said:
“As an anaesthetic department we have always prided ourselves on the safe and patient-centred care we provide for children and young people. The ACSA process has allowed us to benchmark ourselves against the highest standards and to continue to improve both the services we provide and the wellbeing of the department.
“It’s been a long journey for us, but we are really delighted to have achieved ACSA accreditation. It’s involved engagement and hard work, not only from the anaesthetists, but also theatres, the preadmission and pain services, and support from our directorate management teams - all can be justly proud of this achievement.”
Dr Russell Perkins, Vice-President of the Royal College of Anaesthetists said:
“I would like to offer my personal congratulations to the entire anaesthetic department on achieving ACSA accreditation. It is very impressive to see the commitment and approach of the whole department to sustaining their standards. They have demonstrated their ability and passion for providing the best possible care for their patients.
“Patient safety is at the heart of what we do as a Medical Royal College. The quality improvement demonstrated during the accreditation process has helped the department manage the immense tasks presented to them by COVID-19 and the resumption of normal services.
“It was impressive to see the innovative practices taking place at the hospital, and the excellent commitment from all staff during the process. As well as meeting the standards, the department demonstrated many areas of excellent advanced practice that have now been highlighted for sharing through the ACSA network.”