Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT)

The Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is a national programme designed to improve the quality of care within the NHS by reducing unnecessary variation in services. By sharing good practice and new approaches between trusts, GIRFT identifies changes that will help improve care and patient outcomes, as well as delivering efficiencies such as a reduction in unnecessary procedures and patient length of stay, and the consequent cost savings.

The GIRFT methodology has been applied across more than 40 surgical and medical specialties and cross-cutting themes including diagnostics, day case surgery, outpatient services and clinical coding.

Each workstream is led by one or more frontline clinicians who are experts in the specialty they are reviewing. The clinical leadership team for Interventional Radiology is Alex Barnacle (GIRFT clinical lead) and Gillian Kitching (GIRFT clinical advisor).

GIRFT collaborates and works in partnership with NHS trusts, specialist clinical professional bodies (Royal Colleges and societies), and partner NHS organisations in collating, scrutinising and sharing data, highlighting both underperformance and excellence. This evidence has a major impact in identifying variation in clinical outcomes and has provided the focus for hospital teams, departments and clinical networks to tackle unwarranted variation, where it exists, through benchmarking and adopting best practice.

GIRFT works closely with professional organisations to provide a wealth of co-badged pathways, guidance and operational insight to enable strong and informed leadership in improvement. Resources to support improvement in radiology can be found here: Radiology - Getting It Right First Time - GIRFT

GIRFT’s work benefits the NHS through improved productivity, efficiency and capacity, which in turn benefits patients, who can receive treatments quicker, have more equity of access to high quality care, and have better outcomes.

More information on GIRFT’s work and methodology can be found on the programme’s website.

If you would like to contact us, please email GIRFTCENTRAL (NHS ENGLAND - X24) [email protected].

Alex Barnacle

GIRFT clinical lead for Interventional Radiology

Alex is a paediatric interventional radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London. Originally from Zimbabwe, she trained in the UK and Australia and has been a consultant at GOSH since 2006. Her main clinical interests are vascular anomalies, renal stone disease and interventional oncology.

Alex has a longstanding interest in service improvement and leads on several initiatives to develop paediatric IR within the UK and Europe. She is on the executive committee of The British Society of Interventional Radiology (BSIR) and a member of the IR committee of the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR). She authored the RCR 2022 document ‘Improving Paediatric Interventional Radiology Services in the UK’.

She founded Paediatric IR UK, an annual multidisciplinary meeting for the sharing of paediatric IR knowledge and skills, and was the RCR-BSIR Travelling Professor for IR in 2018.

Gillian Kitching

GIRFT clinical advisor for Interventional Radiology

Gillian is a radiographer with over 18 years of experience in Interventional Radiology at MFT, including previously as an Advanced Practice Radiographer performing vascular access and nephrostomy exchanges.

Since 2021 she has been the service lead at this busy IR centre and supports a team of 24 cross site radiographers.

Gillian is particularly interested in service improvement projects within IR and is passionate about utilising skill mix and enhanced roles for nurses and radiographers to improve patient experience and service efficiency.

She is an active member of several networks, including the Greater Manchester IR leads network, and is on the board for the Greater Manchester vascular network and a member of the GM vascular clinical steering group.

Radiology specific links

GIRFT national report for radiology (2020): https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GIRFT-radiology-report.pdf

Guidance

GIRFT diagnostics guide to support elective recovery (2022): https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Diagnostics-guide-to-support-elective-rexcovery-Nov-2022.pdf

 Good practice guide: Imaging support for procedures in theatre: https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Imaging-support-for-procedures-in-theatre-good-practice-guide-FINAL-V3-July-2024.pdf