COPD Collaborative

CPD Credits24

Join the COPD Collaborative Spread Initiative

Following a hugely successful collaborative involving 18 teams in 19 hospitals, we are delighted to launch a second national quality improvement collaborative to improve care for patients with an acute exacerbation of COPD.

Multidisciplinary teams are now invited to sign up for the 12-month collaborative

The collaborative is sponsored by HSE Clinical Design and Innovation and will be coordinated by RCPI. It is fully endorsed by the National Clinical Programme for Respiratory.

Participation in this improvement programme is completely free of charge thanks to HSE funding.

Who can sign up?

We are looking for teams that have an interest in improving care for patients with an acute exacerbation of COPD.

Your team should have three to five members, be consultant-led and include a nurse, a physiotherapist and any other key decision makers or stakeholders.

Team members may be respiratory specialists or those with an interest or exposure to COPD.

Past participants have included AMU staff, clinical nurse specialists, respiratory scientists, hospital management, physiotherapists, and doctors who work in General Internal Medicine.

Why join this collaborative?

This collaborative has been proven to improve quality of care for COPD patients. 

The benefits previously seen include:

  • Improved timely initiation of acute clinical interventions
  • Reduced inappropriate admissions and readmissions
  • Shorter length of stay
  • Improved patient experience
  • Greater integration of care into the community

What to expect

As part of the collaborative programme your team will have access to

  • Four in-house learning sessions 
  • On-site and regional group coaching sessions, delivered by QI experts from RCPI
  • Online tutorials and coursework in our virtual learning environment RCPI Brightspace
  • Peer to peer coaching - Teams that successfully completed this collaborative in 2018/19 will offer their advice and expertise throughout the programme

Your team will be given support from a dedicated RCPI QI faculty to identify opportunities for improvement in key service areas, including at presentation, admission and discharge for patients with AECOPD. We will work with you to achieve the following improvement aims:

  • Access to respiratory specialist review
  • Compliance with admission clinical bundle
  • Use of standardised, evidence-based assessment tools
  • Compliance with discharge processes

How we know this improvement collaborative works

In 2018/2019 18 consultant-led multidisciplinary respiratory teams from 19 Irish hospitals participated in the first cycle of this collaborative learning programme.

For the duration of the programme, participating teams submitted monthly datasets based on twenty evaluation criteria that were agreed with the National Clinical Programme for COPD. All teams made overall COPD pathway improvements for patients at admission, assessment and discharge through the redesign of current processes or implementation of new processes.

By the end of the programme, the following results had been achieved:

  • Reduction in Length of Stay (6.75 days to 5.0 days)
  • Increase in patient prescription review completed before discharge (25 % to 75 %)
  • More patients supported by predischarge inhaler technique training (55 % to 89.5 %)
  • Reduced patient time to wait to see a respiratory specialist (median 25 hours to 13 hours)

View the full final report of the COPD Collaborative 2018/19

See how past participants in this collaborative got on: University of Limerick Hospitals Group

How to apply

To apply as a team, please complete the application form below and return it to QualityImprovement@rcpi.ie by 5pm Friday 21 February 2020.

Open application form - A Word document will download onto your computer/device

No options available at the moment