So I have made it in to the Personalised Care Team and successfully navigated week one. As with any new job role, the first week (or few weeks) feels a bit bizarre as you take time to adjust, but I have felt it even more so coming from a clinical role in to a project support role. Something new, but very exciting.
My background is working as a physiotherapist; I qualified 5 years ago and have worked in a variety of settings since then – from acute to community. I love interacting with patients, building a rapport with them and figuring out how my presence can have the biggest impact in improving the quality of their life.
I got involved in a project from October 2017 to February 2018, whereby Nesta facilitated a ‘100 day challenge’ with focus on NHS England’s Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme – now encompassed in to the Personalised Care Programme. Throughout the challenge I learnt a lot about the content but also about myself and the direction that I maybe wished my career to take. I realised that all the elements I have mentioned above about treating patients were still present but I wanted to do something on a much larger scale to ensure that not just those patients interacting with me, but all patients get that level of service.
On day one, discussion with the Programme Lead led to the decision that ‘Workforce Development’ would be my first focus. I have until the end of March 2019 to make the biggest impact I can, therefore caution was taken as to making this manageable. I know how I feel about the level of care I have been giving and can comment on those I’ve observed around me, but I established quite quickly I need to learn what those delivering care feel about their own practice.
Idea 1: create an online questionnaire to be distributed to therapy staff to capture a snapshot of their views on Personalised Care.
As second days go in a new job, mine was pretty good. The Programme Lead and I went to Birmingham to NHS England’s Personalised Care Collaborative. I had attended the first event back in June with the main focus being on how the collaborative should work and evolve, however I got so much out of this event.
The main points I took away were…
- The importance of sharing the vision (and I guess firstly understanding myself what this is!)
- The importance of inspiring people who are willing to be champions to ensure the changes are embedded and care continues to improve
- There is plenty of learning to be shared – it is having a platform to share it, hence the creation of this blog!
- We need to challenge professional identity and working practices; it’s important to create a generation of leaders and coaches
- The importance of building the Personalised Care programme into recruitment and retention processes in organisations
- How do we make this the norm? Is there scope to work with undergraduate nursing/ therapy/ social care programmes?
Idea 2: Talk to the local university regarding their knowledge of the Personalised Care Programme and how this already works/ could work in undergraduate programmes.
Key thoughts so far…
The biggest thing I have realised is that to be truly personalised, the workforce development strategy needs to come from the workforce.
I also need to continually consider how I am going to assess the IMPACT of any of the work I am involved in in order to evidence the change and demonstrate the benefit to patients.
I now have the opportunity to educate myself on existing workforce practices and innovative change programmes that are already taking place – so I need to get out there and see what I can find!
Idea 3: Meet with and shadow as many people as possible across different organisations to educate myself about current practice
Idea 4: Start a map of how systems interact and link locally which could be shared with clinical staff to improve knowledge and understanding
Achievements this week…
- Stepping outside of my comfort zone
- Starting to network
- Getting to grips with how to use my Outlook Calendar
- Signing myself up to write a one off blog for NHS England
- Starting a weekly blog!
Next week I plan to…
- Meet with people in different organisations (managers, transformation staff, frontline staff) and discuss my role and what’s already happening out there
- Arrange shadowing of professionals I have not directly worked alongside before
- Improve my understanding of co-production within the programme.
Personalised Care Mission 