Reducing stress and distress improvement programme delivery (2026–2027)

This is the second year of the reducing stress and distress improvement programme. Participating teams will be supported to identify and test improvement ideas during a 12-month programme.


Delivery

The programme launches in April 2025 and will run in 2 cohorts.

Each cohort will include a mix of care home and hospital teams from across Scotland (29 care home​ and 22 hospital teams). Healthcare Improvement Scotland will lead on supporting hospital teams, and the Care Inspectorate will lead on supporting care home teams.


Cohort 5

Hospital teams from the following NHS boards:

NHS Ayrshire & Arran
Ayrshire Central Hospital
Arran War Memorial Hospital

NHS Borders
Kelso Community Hospital

NHS Forth Valley
Bo’ness Community Hospital
Forth Valley Royal Hospital

NHS Tayside
Blairgowrie Community Hospital       
Crieff Community Hospital
Murray Royal Hospital
Pitlochry Community Hospital
Royal Victoria Hospital
Stracathro Hospital                
St Margaret’s Community Hospital 

Care Home teams from the following health and social care partnerships (HSCP):

Borders HSCP
Clackmannanshire and Stirling HSCP
Edinburgh HSCP
Falkirk HSCP
North Lanarkshire HSCP
Perth and Kinross HSCP
South Ayrshire HSCP
South Lanarkshire HSCP
West Lothian HSCP
Western Isles HSCP


Cohort 6

Hospital teams from the following NHS boards:

NHS Dumfries and Galloway
Galloway Community Hospital

NHS Grampian
Fraserburgh Hospital
Royal Cornhill Hospital
Seafield Hospital

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
Glasgow Royal Infirmary
Royal Alexandra Hospital
Vale of Leven Hospital

Care Home teams from the following health and social care partnerships (HSCP):

Aberdeen City HSCP
Aberdeenshire HSCP
East Renfrewshire HSCP
Fife HSCP
Glasgow City HSCP
Highland HSCP
Moray HSCP


Months one to six

The programme will be divided into two phases of six-month duration. All learning sessions are interactive. Teams will be expected to achieve key milestones and participate in programme activity during each phase.

During months one to six, all teams will receive monthly one-to-one coaching calls (5 virtual with a minimum of 1 in-person site visit).

Monthly quality improvement learning sessions will be held virtually.

Key activities to be completed by all participating teams are:

  • Month 1: Complete your self-evaluation tool.
  • Month 2: Agree your improvement priorities.
  • Month 3: Understand your system using quality improvement (QI) tools.
  • Month 4: Develop your aim statement and collect data.
  • Month 5: Develop and test your change idea.
  • Month 6: Continue testing and share progress of your change idea.

Months seven to 12

During months seven to 12, teams will receive:

  • one-to-one virtual coaching calls every second month
  • Group virtual learning sessions alternating month, and
  • celebration virtual webinar: feedback from all teams

Key activities to be completed by all participating teams are:

  • continue to identify and test ideas and collect relevant data
  • spread and sustaining improvements, and
  • share learning.

Support for teams 

Joining the improvement programme gives care home and hospital teams access to: 

  • support to self-evaluate current practice and identify improvement priorities
  • learning sessions and one-to-one coaching support over a 12-month period to implement improvement activity
  • an extensive range of resources and toolkits, and 
  • a national learning network of teams across Scotland for peer support and sharing learning.

During the 12-month programme, our improvement advisors will support teams to: 

  • create the conditions for improvement
  • understand your current system
  • identify, plan and test a change
  • capture data and measurement for improvement
  • identify when to implement and scale change, and 
  • share learning. 

Sharing learning

We will capture evidence and learning from improvement activity. We plan to share this with our networks to support wider spread. We will do this by: