SPSP Perinatal and Paediatric Programmes paediatric learning session: April 2025

Paediatric breakout session – Recognising and responding to patient, family and carer concern in acute paediatric services

Aims

  • Discuss the next phase of SPSP Paediatrics
  • Hear from NHS Forth Valley about their improvement work around patient, carer and family concern
  • Opportunity to network and build new connections

The next phase of SPSP Paediatrics

Presented by Sonia Joseph, National Strategic Clinical Lead for Child Health, and Tim Shearman, Improvement Advisor, both from Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS)

Summary

Sonia and Tim shared that over the next twelve months there will be three focuses for SPSP Paediatric:

  1. The deteriorating child and young person collaborative, which will end in September 2025. Ongoing work within territorial boards along this theme would be encouraged, however the support from the national SPSP team will not look the same.
  2. PEWS workstream. In response to concerns raised in the deteriorating child and young person collaborative, as well as intelligence gathered in 2024 as part of a HIS safety bulletin, SPSP will be convening two groups to review the Paediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS). One group, consisting of strategic partners, will consider the governance arrangements for PEWS (Scotland). The other, consisting of paediatric clinicians, will consider concerns raised about the application of the PEWS across Scotland.
  3. SPSP Paediatric redesign workstream. Following the conclusion of the deteriorating child and young person collaborative, SPSP Paediatric will enter a redesign phase to establish a new quality improvement collaborative with a revised focus. The potential options for this focus were shared informally with the audience, who provided some initial feedback. A more formal scoping period to determine the focus for the new collaborative will follow later this year.

Talk to Us (Dinnae Haud yer Wheesht)

Presented by Helen Bauld, Lead Nurse for Paediatrics/Neonates and Sharon Norris, Deputy Charge Nurse, both from NHS Forth Valley.

Summary

This session was introduced by Tim Shearman, who provided the background to work on patient, family, and carer concern. This includes developments outside Scotland such as Martha’s Rule. Links to previous SPSP Paediatric activity within this theme were also shared.

NHS Forth Valley colleagues shared how they have developed and moved on to testing their own parental concern escalation system, called ‘Talk to Us (Dinnae Haud yer Wheesht)’. Through consultation, they have developed a framework which supports parents to escalate concerns about clinical deterioration to staff. Staff also have guidance on how to manage these concerns. They have used existing frameworks, such as Ryan’s Rule from Queensland, Australia and Kōrero Mai (Talk to me) from New Zealand, to inform their approach. Data collection on understanding the impacts of this work is ongoing.