Are you using Q-Pulse in the NHS?

Tell us about your department, how you use Q-Pulse and how it's changed how you work.

Are there any features of Q-Pulse that are particularly useful in your environment? Would you recommend Q-Pulse to other NHS users

Over to you!

Interesting question Daniel and one I am personally very keen to get some feedback on. Historically Q-Pulse has been heavily used within the laboratory accreditation environment, thanks initially to the excellent recommendation that we received from Dr. David Burnett. Since the release of Version 5, however, we have noticed a real shift towards a more integrated approach to healthcare governance and are working on various projects including clinical governance, pharmacy, blood banks, GMP and risk management. Another hot area is NHSLA and we are working on a couple of pilot projects on this matter.

We are still in the process of using Q pulse with our KSF performance review stuff.

I have loaded all the KSF standardsin and am still in the procvess of loading the KSF indicators.

The boxes available are only 200 characters long and don't allow you tto get all the text in. Can this be updated.

We have anumber of questions with this still

1. How do we export a full department training needs analysis - we put all the info in but can't get anything out
2. How do we get a review timetable out - should their be a personal calendar with links in fropm your launchpad maybe....
3. How do we have exportable staff lists and contact details
4. How do we get reports out of the training I have delivered - again for use at reviews
5. How do we easily get a feel for the % of reviews completed
6. How do we use Q pulse for the Gateway management within the KSF
1. How do we load up staff spine points
2. How do we look at people approaching their gateways......

 If we have these things sorted then we can really think about advocating this to our colleagues.

Dave

Basically

PS _ Q pulse chaps this is a very big deal in the NHS and you could make lots of money by having a KSF system which was fab!!!!!

Just to clarify... KSF stands for Knowledge and Skills Framework?

If you have any links or resources, could you post them? I'm interested in reading more.

One thing it would be great to be able to do with q pulse is keep a track of their pay spine number and their approaching increment dates and gateways.

Can this be considered for the future.

KSF is a big thing for us in the NHS and q pulse seems a very logical wayb of managing competence / performance within the people module.

I would suggest we could have it all sorted in a dozen managed fields....

Figure 1 - Q pulse launchpad

Figure 2 - The training courses main page

Figure 3 - the master event list

To add further properties click on the properties tab

Figure 4 - The properties tab

To add a link to the national occupational standards click on

http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/ 

To access the Healthcare science framework click on the link below

http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/tools/advsearch_results.php?q=&framework%5B%5D=73&level%5B%5D=1&level%5B%5D=2&level%5B%5D=3&level%5B%5D=4&adv_search.x=21&adv_search.y=16

Figure 5 - The HCS career framework competence list

Click on the approptiate standard and view the HTML

http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/tools/viewcomp.php?id=2917

The KSF level of the activity is included in the competence.

To add the competence to Q pulse.

Figure 6 - edit attachment page

Figure 7 - insert URL page

Paste the url into the box click OK.

The master event can be added to a competence.

Figure 8 - the launch pad

On the edit tab click view master competencies

To a competency level

right click to add a training event to the competency level

select the master competency from the list

Click Ok.

The procedure based training event is now attached to the KSF level.

This competency can then be added to a job role

On the edit tab select master job roles

Right click on the highlighted field to open the competency

Click Ok.

On the main menu select the person you want

On the main menu click the action tab and select apply job role.

click Ok

The job role will now be added to the person and the competencies will be added to that persons training plan

The increment and spine number thing is familiar to me - I used to work in local government. We got an pay increment yearly, which moved you up one spinal column point. This continued until you got to the top of your scale.

It would have been handy to have a tool that tracks your spinal column point (stage on the payscale) and increment dates. I can see it being useful for personnel/HR departments.

I'm thinking on similar lines Dave, but I am reluctant to commit too much time to developing the Training & people modules when we are being told that we must use e-KSF for appraisals.

The interesting thing is that the new CPA standards require records of every individual's competence assessment and e-KSF was not designed to record this - at least not at the level of individual procedures, which is how we would want to proceed in NHS medical labs and which could be accomodated within QPulse.

 One advantage of QPulse is the ability to link procedure-based training events to individual training requirements with either a time limited renewal interval or to the revision of the SOP. There is no way that I can see this being done within e-KSF or with our Trust's electronic training system.

We use a  competence scoring system within our paper-based competence assessment system whereby the SOPs associated with a lab section and job role are listed and trainers score the trainee's competence on a 1-4 scale. I am struggling to find a way to mimicthis in QPulse. It is easy to associate a training event to a competence level, but much harder to implement competence scoring against a procedure. The only ways I can see to do this would either be to use one of the fields intended for scoring the trainer or training event or to attach a document. The first solution would require renaming a QPulse field which is not a customisable field (not possible I think, so you would have to make it a convention). The second would not be popular because the spreadsheets we use for competence scoring are printed so they can follow the trainee around and can be signed by trainer and trainee. Users would be reluctant to do this with electronic versions of the spreadsheet and scanning them would be a bit of a nightmare.

The whole thing could easily be solved by adding a field to the training event record for competence score and this would then make QPulse the only software that could fulfil the CPA requirement for competence assessment in its entirety.

I suspect that this might be welcomed in other sectors (e.g. aviation) 

Just re-read the title of the thread so:

I am QM & Training Manager for a large London Teaching Hospital Haematology Department, so I use all modules. Documents, CAPA & Audit came first with ver 4, but now I am developing Customers, Suppliers, Assets & Training.

I have one lab that is regulated by 4 bodies (CPA, MHRA/GMP, Human Tissue Authority & a body specific for Bone Marrow transplantation that bears the acronym JACIE). This presents a big challenge because documents, audit & CAPA management have to satisfy all 4 QM systems.

I have now almost finished copy & pasting the Areas of Standard for all 4 into QPulse, which allows me to allocate areas of std to documents as well as CAPA & audit non compliances (hospital Blood Transfusion labs are also better served by GMP regulations than by CPA stds, so I would recommend the MHRA Orange Guide in CD format if you want to do the same)

GMP requirements for supplier audit & asset management (validation & calibration) are much more pronounced than under CPA stds, so I would envisage more use of these as the MHRA inspection regime begins to bite harder