Improving Tracheostomy Care

Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is one of the largest and most complex hospital groups in Europe. The NTSP is run out of Wythenshawe Hospital, one of the key MFT hospitals in the South of Manchester. In 2025, MFT started working with Atos Medical on a number of projects to understand how we can better "wean" patients from mechanical ventilation in ICU, how we can get patients talking more easily, and to summarise some of the literature for tracheostomy care publsihed worldwide. The projects are supported by Atos as part of their Investigator Initiated Research program.  

Part of the work will involve changing tracheostomy tube brands and we are capturing evidence around how to do this safely in a large organisation like MFT. These pages are primarily a resource for MFT staff during the changeover process but we want to make the resources publically available too. We are going to examine any potential cultural or organisaitonal barriers to change during a three-year research project, led by Charge Nurse Alex Haines. We plan to switch tube providers on a unit-by-unit basis, working through each of the hospitals in the group separately. We will interview a wide range of staff from bedside nurses, doctors and allied healthcare professionals, through to those involved in stock management, procurement and training. We will also capture the views of patients and their families and collect information about any problems or benefits that we observe or measure. After each changeover, we will review the data that we have collected and aim to implement any learning into the next location as we change tube brands. We aim to publish and disseminate our learning to help other hospitals and staff think about how to manage change on a large scale. 

The main reason for the switchover is that we have experienced problems with supply of trachoestomy tubes recently and newer tubes on the market have a range of potential benefits that we would like to explore. One of the main benefits of standardising tube brands across a hospital is that training and equipment provision is much easier. However, this is also a potential barrier to switching brands. Our project will evaluate the switching process, examine the logistical and training burdens invovled, and aim to develop a blueprint for switching brands in the future or at other hospitals, based on our scientific evaluation of the process. 

If you have any questions about this project, you can email the team at itc@tracheostomy.org.uk