Improving Together: Listening is key - CEO Caroline Donovan's Blog - 4 December
I have really enjoyed the last couple of weeks and am enjoying getting to know our staff and stakeholders. I have continued to receive a warm welcome from all– many thanks!
It was great to meet Healthwatch Suffolk and Norfolk Mind over the last week and listen to their perspectives on working together with our organisation. It was great that both organisations, as well as Healthwatch Norfolk who I have previously met, are really wanting to support us and work together in partnership.
Getting to meet as many of our staff as possible remains a priority for me. I really enjoyed my visit to the in-patient wards at Woodlands and was delighted to meet staff separately from the wards and crisis teams. It is always inspiring to meet staff, especially those who are working directly with our patients, and seeing for myself the impact they have. These visits provide a great opportunity for any staff to talk to me and tell me how I can help them to increase effectiveness and satisfaction. This is often facilitating small changes that can make a big difference, but are somehow difficult or awkward to implement due to bureaucracy, red tape or similar. At Woodland, there were some examples of small changes to the environment that needed to be made which will make such a difference for staff and service users. Thank you so much to Belinda Danso-Langley for showing me around, and to all the staff I met for taking the time to come and see me.
Our Trust Board meeting took place last week. The papers are available on our website here and I’d encourage you to take a look. One important part of the meeting was the report of the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian. Clearly, this is another example of the importance of listening to staff for the direct benefit of patients. I was really pleased to hear that confidence in this vital service is growing, usage is up, though we do have more to do to ensure that when people do speak up, we are taking action where appropriate, ensuring we are learning and improving.
Following engagement with our staff and stakeholders in the summer, it is clear that a redesign of our clinical and operational leadership model is necessary to address sustained, increased demand for our services; to increase staff experience and satisfaction; and remove barriers that get in the way of delivering great care. We are about to undertake more engagement to co-design a place-based, clinically-led approach that builds capacity and capability, reduces inequalities, involves our service users and carers, strengthens multi-disciplinary leadership and enables us to work closely with our partners. We are in the process of appointing someone with a clinical background to come to join the team working on this to ensure we design a strong clinical, professional and operational structure that can respond to the needs of our communities, offers career development for people and enables clinical decision making to be very visible. It was really helpful discussing this in the Hear to Listen session this week and to get some initial thoughts and views from people, which was very positive.
This week we are launching our new Listening into Action (LiA) programme. More information will be shared at our Hear to Listen event on 6th December at 11am. This will continue the work started by last year’s Big Conversation and puts staff right at the centre, enabling them to make the changes they know matter, from the ground up. It’s an exciting programme and a vital part of our improvement journey. I really want you to be part of it, so please get involved. As Chief Executive, I will personally lead this work, which is proven to lead to fast-pace, widespread change for the benefit of staff, service users and patients. I will be leading workshops across the organisation which I hope you will join and offer your thoughts. The whole purpose of the programme is to take action to enable clinically-led change. I have used this methodology very successfully for many years. We will engage widely with staff, show visible actions in response, and support many LiA Change Teams. By putting staff at the centre of change, we are making a fundamental shift in how we work and lead.
Finally, I want to say congratulations to Shiju, clinical educator for overseas nurses who recently attended a royal reception celebrating the work of international nurses and midwives. Shiju was at Buckingham Palace to meet King Charles III as he marked his 75th birthday, coinciding with 75 years since the inception of the NHS. He also met with Chief Nursing Officer for the NHS, Dame Ruth May. Well done Shiju. Thank you for doing your vitally important work so well. We are all very proud of you.
Until next time,
Caroline