About

Meet Jacqui

Jacqui Holmes MCSP

MSc Physiotherapy (pre-registration) / BSc Medical Sciences

Jacqui Holmes obtained a first class BSc in Medical Sciences, with year in industry, from the University of Leeds in 2016 after which she studied MSc Physiotherapy (pre-registration) at the University of Birmingham and qualified as a Physiotherapist in 2018. Remaining in Birmingham, Jacqui gained clinical experience as a Junior and Senior Physiotherapist across a variety of specialist areas at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham before specialising as Team Lead Physiotherapist for Health Care of Older People in 2022.

In April 2024, Jacqui moved into an Operational Lead role for Inpatient Physiotherapy at Kingston Hospital within Kingston & Richmond NHS Foundation Trust and supported several projects associated with the Trust’s 2024/25 Quality Priority to prevent deconditioning across acute and community settings. Jacqui is passionate about improving care for frail older adults, with a particular focus on preventing hospital acquired deconditioning and reducing the negative impacts of inactivity and immobility on patients, staff and the system. Her primary focus is around embedding The Eat, Drink, Dress, Move Programme into routine care to drive activity and mobility promotion.

Jacqui’s work to prevent hospital acquired deconditioning began in November 2022 when she engaged in the Emergency Care Improvement Support Team (ECIST)’s #ReconditionTheNation initiative. Her work so far has been recognised across the country, with Jacqui speaking on a number of regional, national and global webinars & podcasts to share learning and improvements in relation to the national #ReconditionTheNation and #EndPJparalysis social movements. Her work was also awarded a high commendation in the ‘Improving Health Care for Older People Initiative of the year’ category at the HSJ Patient Safety awards in 2023 and she was personally invited to attend the 7th Annual Johns Hopkins Activity and Mobility Promotion (JH-AMP) Programme Conference in Baltimore, USA. More recently, Jacqui has been awarded the British Geriatrics Society's Rising Star Award for Clinical Quality. Read more about this award here.

Jacqui has also released a new educational podcast for health care staff and students, focused on the principles of ‘Eat, Drink, Dress, Move’ to prevent deconditioning – find out more by heading to the theEDDMpodcast page on this website!

Alongside her clinical and quality improvement work, Jacqui is heavily involved in the education and training of staff across the wider multidisciplinary team, leading on the production and delivery of Frailty and Deconditioning training sessions and study days. Jacqui's Poster on 'Education and Training on Eat Drink Dress Move (EDDM) Principles to Prevent Deconditioning' was selected as Winner of the 'Education and Training' category in the 2024 HSJ Patient Safety Congress Poster Competition. Take a look at the winning poster here.

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The History of Eat, Drink, Dress, Move

In November 2022, the Emergency Care Improvement Support Team (ECIST) launched their mission to #ReconditionTheNation off the back of the success of East of England's 'Deconditioning Games'. The aim of #ReconditionTheNation was to:

Improve patient outcomes by prevention of deconditioning.
Improve staff wellbeing by introducing joy in their work.
Improve the health of the nation by introducing wide scale change across health and care sector.

Jacqui was really inspired by this. She wanted to engage and encourage her entire Health Care of Older People (HCOP) Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) to consider small improvement ideas that could tap into promoting reconditioning with their patients whilst feeding into this National #ReconditionTheNation initiative. So, they got involved! Jacqui and her team implemented small improvement projects including: Frailty and Deconditioning Training, 'My Movement Boards', Group ward-based exercise classes, MDT Bed-Boards, Patient information leaflets and posters. Jacqui shared her success stories across the #ReconditionTheNation learning and sharing platforms both regionally and nationally. She was also invited to speak about her work at the 2023 and 2024 #EndPJparalysis Global Summit!

As her work continued to expand, Jacqui thought it was the right time to integrate her work and ideas to refresh previous attempts to get ‘Eat, Drink, Dress, Move’ launched at UHB NHSFT. So, she set about re-branding and re-launching 'Eat, Drink, Dress, Move' to further raise awareness of deconditioning and share the success of her team's reconditioning project efforts. UHB initially launched this as a therapy-led approach to care but, whilst Jacqui appreciated reasons for a therapy-led initiative, she felt it was much better to re-launch this as a multidisciplinary approach to care, in which preventing deconditioning was everybody's responsibility, not just therapists.

Evidence suggests that acute deconditioning should be prevented through a shared responsibility among staff, culture change and activity-driven care which reinforces positive feedback on performance to increase physical activity in patients. The EDDM Programme aims to do just that; empower patients to actively participate in their recovery by eating and drinking well, maintaining functional and cognitive activities, moving and being as active as possible in hospital.

Jacqui spent time seeking feedback on her new brand design, creating an 'Eat, Drink, Dress, Move' logo which represented the key messages she wanted to communicate:

All Eat, Drink, Dress and Move elements must be promoted at all times by all staff, which is why the design is circular with no start or end.
Each Eat, Drink, Dress and Move element can influence and impact on one another, which is why you each element connects with, or leads into, another.
Care should be person centered with a goal to involve, empower and engage patients to play an active role in their recovery. This is why you see a person at the heart of the logo, central to the success of EDDM!

Once the logo was designed, Jacqui really promoted this brand through everything she did. She funded EDDM badges and created EDDM Certificate's of Excellence to reward staff for their efforts to embed EDDM principles into their work to prevent deconditioning. She developed and delivered an EDDM Study Day to further educate MDT staff on the principles of EDDM and the roles we can all play in promoting this in our work. Jacqui worked closely with Matrons and Ward Managers to identify EDDM Champions for each ward, and she continued to celebrate and share the success of her team and others who were embracing the brand and the principles behind it.

The more Jacqui spoke about her work on various platforms, the more other NHS Trusts began to engage and enquire about using and adapting the EDDM brand in their own clinical settings. This included Kingston and Richmond NHSFT, who worked alongside Jacqui to enhance their own EDDM brand and create the version you see today! Jacqui wanted to harness and utilise this momentum and engagement from the wider national community of people working to prevent deconditioning, and so she created TheEDDMpodcast as a platform on which others could learn about, share and celebrate successful ideas and projects which build upon EDDM principles.

And so, here we are! If you'd like to find out more about Jacqui or her Eat, Drink, Dress, Move journey please don't hesitate to get in touch via the social media buttons/tags, email address at the bottom of this page, or The EDDM programme contact page!

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