World Hearing Day – a reminder to evaluate our practices and services?
The main theme for the World Health Organisation’s 2024 World Hearing Day was about Changing Mindsets. Recently, we have been reflecting on that for UK Audiology. Indeed, our Bamford Lecture at our annual conference in November challenged us all to consider our mindsets, attitude and approach to quality, and our audiology practice.
If you work as a healthcare provider, you don’t turn up to work intending to do a bad job. However, have you properly sat down and considered whether you can evidence if you are actually doing a good enough job?
BAA has made the Bamford Lecture recording available for all to watch, and I would encourage you to take a look here when you have 40 minutes.
BAA Board Directors have been heavily involved in the audiology review work over the last twelve months, contributing across the different subgroups in Scotland and now England. Vice President, Claire Benton, says in the forthcoming BAA magazine, “What is happening now is a huge opportunity for all of us. We have got the attention we need to make the necessary changes to make wholesale improvement across all areas of Audiology. However, this is not going to be done by others for us, or indeed by the few volunteers currently working on this. To get the change we need, all of us will have to do our part. It being difficult is not a reason to do nothing.”
The NHS England Standard Contract for 2024/2025 has now been published, and the technical guidance has made recommendations for all ICBs to develop Service Development Improvement Plans (SDIP) with all providers that deliver Paediatric Audiology to take all services forward to IQIPS accreditation.
This should mean that services that are not currently IQIPs accredited for paediatric audiology will be contacted by their ICB and supported to develop an action plan on how to become accredited. We would encourage all services to talk to their ICBs about supporting the extra resource this would take.
Our Service Quality Committee recently released the BAA Quality Improvement Toolkit, and I would encourage you to work your way through that as a first step to quality checking and potentially improving your audiology practice, your department, the profession, and ultimately for the benefit of every patient in our departments and practices.
Download the BAA Quality Improvement Toolkit here
Take care of yourselves,
Sam