After three years of hard work from our nursing teams and colleagues across the trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital has been successfully awarded accreditation by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and are now Pathway Designated.
Moorfields was one of only 14 trusts in the UK who were put forward for this accolade, which is built around six standards: health and wellbeing, shared decision-making, quality, safety, professional development, and leadership,
To have achieved the accreditation reflects the hard work, dedication, and care our nursing teams deliver every day.
The Pathway to Excellence Program
To qualify for designation, organisations must meet the six Pathway Standards essential to an ideal nursing practice environment. Applicants undergo a review process to fully document the integration of those standards in the organisation's practices, policies, and culture.
The six standards that are essential elements in developing a positive practice environment.
- Shared decision-making requires the organisation to establish opportunities for direct care nurses to network, collaborate, share ideas, and be involved in decision-making as part of it's foundation.
- Leadership fosters the foundation of collaboration amongst the staff and supports a shared governance environment. It ensures that leaders are accessible and that they facilitate collaborative decision-making. This standard also emphasises leadership development, orientation, retention, accountability, and succession planning.
- Safety prioritises the safety and well-being of nurses, staff and patients through safety policies and processes. It fosters a respectful workplace culture free of incivility, bullying, and violence.
- Quality is central to an organisation's mission, vision, goals, and values, and is based on person- and family-centred care, evidence-based care, continuous improvement, and improving population health. Quality assessments are based on internal and external benchmarking.
- Well-being promotes the development of positive balance between work and personal life. This standard provides staff with support and resources to promote their physical and mental health. It nurtures the recognition and encouragement of achievements for community service, patient advocacy and contributions to improving population health.
- Professional development ensures the organisation recognises the importance of solid onboarding, transition programmes beyond orientation and continued professional development that supports lifelong learning in the delivery of safe and effective patient care.
Impactful changes
Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Trust achieved the nursing Pathway to Excellence accreditation in 2023, and are proactively working towards maintaining our status. As a result of the process we have introduced many impactful changes including:
- Developing a culture of innovation in practice as all levels within the workforce to improve safety, quality, patient and staff experience.
- Giving staff the autonomy to act with the right support from the organisation.
- Establishing a dedicated pathway team.
- Shared decision making has been made a quality priority to include personalised care shared decision making
- Shared decision councils have been introduced to all sites.
- Continuous celebration of nursing, understanding small wins have a great impact, for example the Daisy Awards
- Redefining governance processes to allow a more inclusive approach.
- Monitoring workforce data to see improvements in workforce stats, vacancy rates and sickness levels.