Day 71: Compassionate Discomfort

Sometimes difficult decisions need to be made.  They can make us feel uncomfortable.  When we make others feel uncomfortable, it is likely they will remember what the challenge was and behave differently in future.

If we are compassionate in how we make decisions, and empathetic in situations when we know others will be uncomfortable, we can live with this discomfort and still be effective in what we are doing.

Don’t leave inappropriate behaviour unchallenged, just because it’s uncomfortable for you and/or others.  This will be remembered; do it with compassion and empathy and this will be for the right reasons!

Day 57: Responding to Feedback

Whether the feedback is about you personally, or a service you’re responsible for, it can prompt an emotional response.  Health and social care organisations have well established complaints and feedback processes to try to be objective about what may have gone wrong and what needs to be done to resolve it.

However, in doing so, it is important to remember that although organisations can minimise the emotion in an investigation and response, this remains for the complainant.  It’s important to acknowledge the feelings of the person who has taken time to provide feedback and understand this in how your respond.

Day 5: Area Team Directors of Nursing & Family Photos

Impossible to keep to just 100 words today, so won't try (I knew this would happen, but thought it might be longer than 5 days before I had to break this rule, hope you still find it interesting!).

I spent the morning today with Directors of Nursing from both NHS commissioner and provider organisations in Hertfordshire & South Midlands led by Heather Moulder; this included acute hospitals, mental health & learning disability and community Trusts as well as CCG lead nurses.  The focus of the meeting was workforce and Regional Chief Nurse @RMayNurseDir joined us to talk about work she is doing leading National Nursing Vision Action Area 5. She presented an overview of guidance and national expectations for nursing workforce, likely to be launched at the Chief Nursing Officer conference this Autumn.

We also heard from Director of Nursing colleagues about nursing workforce challenges respectively in community, mental health and learning disability, along with impressive values-based recruitment to nursing and care assistant roles at Northampton General Hospital led by Suzie Loader.

We celebrated the success that has been achieved in reducing pressure ulcers within the region, but acknowledged that complacency must not be allowed as there is more to tackle on this, such as those originating from the community-based care settings.

There was also a very interesting conversation about compassion including the measurement of this.  Further research being done looking at measurement and how this can be used to best influence improvements in compassionate care.

My afternoon was spent catching up from being out of the office for the past day and a half and also, very importantly, finally got pictures of Mrs F & the kids out and put up in my office!

Thank you for reading my blog this week, do comment and feedback, as I want this to be helpful, interesting, useful to you and willing to improve this.  More to come next week.