Day 53: Ambition

I have an ambition for Turning Point regarding Quality Improvement.  Developing a new approach to Quality Improvement is a Mountain that takes years to climb, not a hill ascended in a day.  We are in the mere foothills now, but everyone have spoken within the organisation is supportive of the journey we need to take.

Our strategic direction is to continuously improve what we do leading to better outcomes and experiences for the people we support whilst reducing health inequalities and improving wellbeing.  This is not easy; if it were everyone would be doing it and we wouldn’t be needed!

Day 36: Speak Up About Safety Issues & Workload

Today I read the write-up of this study in the BMJ of people working in a busy hospital surgical departments in Ghana.  Whilst this may appear extremely different to a setting that you work in, the principles are totally applicable to many areas, particularly health and social care services in the UK:

1.      People don’t want to speak up for fear of being asked to do even more.

2.      People don’t have time to raise issues and people are too busy to hear them, or act upon them.

3.      Supporting ‘hearer’ courage may be as important as speaking up in the first place!

Day 33: Reflection

Time reflecting today and thinking about how we shift culture.  This included considering how we deal with the anxiety of those things we can and can’t control. 

This made me think that we do waste a huge amount of emotional energy and can feel immense anxiety about things we have absolutely no control over.  We need to become more comfortable with the discomfort of the things we can’t control and to focus on those things that we do have at least some control over.

This can only happen with practise and support from colleagues around us in a learning environment.