How can we improve our healthcare?

Working from home, working for yourself and working on a start-up are things that I’ve found challenging. That’s what I’m doing at the moment and it can feel quite isolating. But where can you look for support when you feel isolated?

For me it’s always helpful to find a connection with others who share a similar vision, passion and values.

Late in October I found this in Bristol with Q for their annual community event, sharing ideas on how to make improvement across the health sector.

Q are a community of thousands of people across the UK and Ireland who share knowledge and support each other to tackle challenges. Together, we make faster progress to change health and care for the better. Q is delivered by the Health Foundation and supported and co-funded by partners across the UK and Ireland.

I’ve spent the last 10 years working in the third sector for a number of charities in programme management so have a fair bit of experience in the delivery and development of support services. My experience of delivering these programmes has mainly been focused on community delivery. There has been some work with the NHS but not enough to give me a full understanding of how it works.

The NHS is a complex machine to say the least. Costing the Department of Health some £192 billion in 2020/21, employing 1.2 million staff across 219 trusts (some running multiple hospitals) with 136,878 beds it’s not easy to find how an idea like mine might find its place.

I realised early on that what I needed was help in understanding how I could take my idea and develop it into something that could be delivered in the NHS.

NHS plans for improvement

The first session of the day was a panel discussion in which we were shown a piece of new development work from the NHS for an approach to improvement. Getting the opportunity to have input in the development of a something like this is great but there were a few things that were a little off.

We started sharing our thoughts in smaller groups before feeding back to everyone there. Starting the discussions in smaller groups felt much more comfortable and then moving back to the group to hear other people’s thoughts was reaffirming of our initial chats.

Looking at the model that was shared with us there were a couple of things that really stood out:

1.       The title of the model started with “The NHS approach..” which didn’t seem like a particularly collaborative position to start with when looking at it from outside of the NHS from a third sector perspective

2.       Nothing about the model seemed new or particularly innovative. It was on brand with the NHS blue and contained 5 points around what they want to focus on which seemed like very linear thinking to a complex problem.

3.       The content of the model seemed to use the same words and phrases that we’ve seen time and time again. Things like capacity, capability, people, leadership, vision and culture. Even then, the most important sections of vision and culture weren’t at the top of the list.

I’d like to see an approach developed that was new thinking and shared in a way that made me want to buy into it. For me, anything like that has to start with the why you’re doing something. If you get people on board with the vision then rest will follow. A great way to do this is with Golden Circles which you can see Simon Sinek talk about in the video below.

Sharing ideas

What I really enjoyed about the event was how participatory it was and that’s what I feel Q is all about. It wasn’t about attending and viewing a day full of presentations, it was about sharing ideas and making connections. There was a lot of opportunities to do that.

Our next session was an “Open Space” conversation in which people gave ideas that mattered to them and then had the opportunity to host discussions in which other attendees could drop into to share their thoughts and experiences.

Ahead of the day and even as the session started, I didn’t think that I was going to put forward any ideas to be discussed. But as the microphone was being passed around, I thought that it would be an opportunity missed not to put forward an idea.

I raised my hand and was passed the microphone. I started talking about my experience of trying to work with various parts of the NHS and the difficulties I had faced. I wanted to find out how we can get a range of voices round the table to solve issues. What I’m talking about is coproduction. Something that gets talked about but not something that I see happening.

I called the Open Space “Making collaboration fully inclusive”. I wanted to get a better understanding of how people we can look at creating spaces where people can join together and have conversations about issues on a level playing field.

Hearing different perspectives and experiences on this as I hosted the discussion definitely gave me food for thought and some useful next steps to move forwards with. Two things really stood out for me. One, if it could ever be truly coproduced if it wasn’t led from lived experience, and two, that there needs to be a pathway for those with lived experience to take their ideas from inception through a development journey.

Sharing my thoughts on camera

Before the event I received an email from the Q team asking me if I would be happy to be involved in a film that they were making to promote membership across Q. Without hesitation, it was a yes. I’ll take any opportunity to talk about getting the voices of lived experience heard.

The only thing that maybe made me feel a little hesitant was that I’ve only been a member of Q for about 6 months or so. It doesn’t feel like that long compared to people who have been there for years. But I know that it’s all about getting different perspectives from different backgrounds, so I quickly quietened that thought.

Talking about my experience on camera actually gave me space to reflect on what I’ve done with Q since joining and that was valuable because, turns out I’ve done quite a bit in 6 months. From visiting National Innovation Centre for Ageing, to blog writing, to making new connections to move forwards with my wheelchair skills endeavours, it’s been a place that I’ve found incredibly useful.

Is this for you?

As more people join Q, the voices involved will come from more diverse perspectives and that can only be a good thing. No individual will have the answer to a problem but working collaboratively, we can better shape things that work for us.

If making things better is something that you’ve got a passion for and you feel like you have something to bring to the conversation about improvement whether that be from lived experience or learned experience I’d definitely recommend checking out the Q website to find out more.