In May of this year, I began the Mary Seacole Leadership course – run by the NHS leadership academy. The course has been really interesting and the 12 modules cover a whole range of topics which have really challenged me, but ultimately have prepared me for a leadership role. Module 8 is Leading for improvement, which I purposefully left until I started in my new role within the Personalised Care team. Sitting down on Sunday evening to do some study feeling relieved as I was nearing the end of the module – which is the longest module ever I hasten to add – the words ‘improvement as a social movement’ filled my screen. At the collaborative event last week we completed a workshop with this very much in mind, learning from examples such as #hellomynameis and the Park Run initiative. Feeling inspired by the impact of these social movements, I already felt as though this would be a great way to create awareness of the programme amongst organisations locally. So with this already bubbling in my mind, the fact it appeared in the Mary Seacole programme means this must be the way forwards! So if I am caught staring in to space, it’s because words and acronyms are whizzing around my mind trying to figure how this could work in our programme, more to come on this over the following weeks…
Idea 5: Generate energy around the Programme through the use of a social movement
My quest to find out what is happening within the area I am working has begun. I have been able to meet with managers to find out what priorities are for the localities within the STP and for me to begin to consider how the Personalised Care programme may align with these. I’m enjoying how discussions with one person, sparks an idea or creates a contact as to someone else that would be good to talk to and so on and so forth. I feel this relates to the workforce – we all pick up snippets of information about a service or a local group that is really helpful, but perhaps this information is not always passed on or not reinforced after it is passed on to keep it in peoples minds.
I have been able to bounce ideas off of managers too in terms of how in my mind workforce development may work. Initially I have been thinking of working with the community therapy teams; physiotherapists, occupational therapists/ technical instructors and rehab assistants. Coming from working within these teams myself, I understand the types of patients they see and the nature of assessments and treatment plans. These are also teams I have links with and will be able to test ideas and training methods with. Discussions then led on to the inclusion of community matrons as they very much are working towards empowering patients and supporting with education around self-management of long term conditions. I mentioned my thoughts about students, which lead to the following idea…
Idea 6: To look in to the option of not only undergraduate degrees but postgraduate degrees also such as the District Nurse qualification
Key thoughts this week…
Although the national Personalised Care programme has a vision, do we currently have a local personalised care vision? I feel this will be really important in terms of work force development.
There are really great pieces of work going on within the localities of the STP that are striving towards personalised care, how can we support and promote these ideas so that they are sustainable in the future?
Achievements this week…
- ✓Idea 1: create a paper online questionnaire to be distributed to therapy staff to capture a snapshot of their views on Personalised Care.
- Learning how to colour code my outlook calendar – a necessity right?
- Having a better understanding of the Co-Production group within the programme and how they are shaping key elements of the local programme and how they may be able to support workforce development
- Beginning to understand priorities and work that is already taking place within the STP, which this programme may link to.
Next week I plan to…
- Attend the regional social prescribing conference
- Continue to explore local priorities and learn about work currently taking place in the STP
- Attend my final workshop day for the Mary Seacole course – so very nearly finished!
- Hopefully retrieve responses from the questionnaire I have distributed to community therapists and begin to collate and analyse the data
- Start to create a more formal work plan for my role and define the impact I want to have
Personalised Care Mission 