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

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.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton