Well… I said I’d do one every month so here we go for another round up.

So, what’s happened since last time? Well…we had a family episode of COVID which translated into D+V for the kids – great! We used the time stuck at home to make a Halloween film and to continue the home-made horror theme my husband accidently set the neighbours garden on fire with a failed fireworks display! Once we could get out we went to the Banksy exhibition which gave my rebellious streak a good boost. I got a picture of a few good quotes that made me think about improvement, please excuse the language…

In the usual humdrum of never-ending house tasks, the hob broke so we were living off a camping stove, the drain was blocked outside, we needed a new boiler and once that was all sorted the sink started leaking!!!! How do we all manage to work so hard, raise children, keep healthy and manage all of the house stuff too? ‘Just keep going, one thing at a time’ – I often tell myself or in the words of a famous fish ‘just keep swimming’.

Take some time out – story of self

I’m a huge advocate of taking time out when the pressure is piling on – no matter how impossible it seems. My deputy and I finally managed this month to get a whole day of thinking time together. We figured out how to manage our workloads better between us and the teams and we also did a bit of ‘story of self’.  Marshal Ganz has developed the idea (see link at the end). He says:

“A “Story of Self” tells why we have been called to action. We each have our own story to tell, and we have all had different life experiences that have shaped our core values and beliefs. In a Story of Self, we express the values that move us to work for change.“

There are three elements to the overarching idea about public narrative – story of self, story of us and story of now. Over the years, using this approach has really helped me manage imposter syndrome by building a narrative about myself I can confidently use. Practically I think of it like this, have a go! You start by thinking ‘what is my story, why am I here, what do I bring? Then, what is our story, what do we have in common? And then, what are we going to do together? I use it all the time.

Don’t be afraid to reach out

A mentor of mine gave me the advice a long time ago to not be afraid to reach out to leaders in your field and make yourself known. It’s always stayed with me and this month I met with a fantastic national leader for some advice. We had a brilliant call and it just goes to show that you should never be afraid to reach out. Have a think – who is leading the way in your field? Would it be interesting to connect with them, could they help you? If so – drop them a line – the worse that can happen is they don’t read your email or see your linked in message but you might just end up with a great connection!

How to become a CIO…

This month I attended the Informatics Skills Development Network (ISDN) steering group. One of the goals of the network is to support future CIOs. We talked about how difficult it is for people to take time out to attend development courses and considered how different media could help, including podcasts and blogs. So I thought I’d share some thoughts in here about how to become a CIO. The main thing I think is important is that the workload is super varied and all the CIOs I’ve met come from a different background. Some are specialised in IT, some come from an informatics background, some are focussed on cyber security or information governance, there are people from the private sector or who have come up through the NHS and some like me have more of a background in improvement and transformation. If you believe that technology and information are going to help us solve some of our intractable problems and improve care then go and check out a CIO or deputy CIO role. Don’t worry if you don’t meet everything in the job spec as they are very varied roles, give the recruiter a ring and see what they’re looking for – it might be you!

Mission interop

I re launched our ‘mission interop’ programme this month with our great innovation and interop lead. This is our programme to deliver seamless sharing of information to improve patient care – internally (one NWAS) and across the system (one North West). One thing we’re really pushing is enabling digital referrals from on scene which could improve care and bring huge time efficiencies with a direct impact to improving care for those waiting. Our deputy CCIO is working relentlessly to push this important work. I also attended the PRISM board which is a coming together of all 4 ICBs for the North West and NHS E/I north to deliver a single access point to shared care records for the North West. Our new CCIO started this month and I’m very excited about how he’ll pick up and lead this programme.

Meetings, Papers and Presentations

This month I had exec, diversity and inclusion committee, project boards from EPR to smaller projects and we hosted the national Ambulance Improvement and UEC teams in our innovation lab. The IT team did some great work to improve our failover capabilities and increase resilience. The BI team are getting lots of urgent data requests, I reviewed our Integrated Performance Report which is a mammoth task (well done team) and got the final version of our Unified Tech Fund Investment Agreement in with a lot of help from our fab new digital programme manager. We got a bid in to research point of care testing for cardiac with our GM partners which is exciting. I did some commander training to support aligning our IT on call processes to the command processes – the most striking conversation was around the balance of our statutory requirements – health and safety, equality and diversity and duty of care to both individuals and the population.  I enjoyed doing a few short presentations this month too – virtually for the Blue Lights Partnership and the Australian Improvement Academy (7am start!) and one for the Healthcare Excellence forum. Each was slightly different but had a theme around how we’ve enabled rapid digital change and used improvement methods to enable digital innovation.

System Improvement and Collaboration

I enjoyed providing a little oversight and support to our improvement team who are preparing for 3 ICB handover collaborative events in early December – they are doing an amazing job getting the days ready and it should be a great opportunity to get provider and system leaders together to agree tests of change focussed on this important area.

Quality Management Systems

I loved learning more about quality management systems from our super smart Chief of Regulatory Compliance and Improvement at our quality strategy session. It got me thinking about how essential quality control is to sustain improvement and enable us to innovate and how sometimes we’ve tripped over trying to innovate on areas which aren’t in control.

It’s the taking part that counts

I went to the HSJ awards for the first time ever in my 20 years in the NHS. We were up for two awards – one for the teams work on handover with system partners and one for our work to create a SMART digitised ambulance station. We didn’t win either but it was great to celebrate our work anyway – we know we’re winners!

Movember

November was men’s mental health month. On our Quality Directorate Team brief our CTO spoke about his own experience. He was brilliant and such an inspiration. He talked about showing vulnerability as a strength not a weakness which I totally agree with and I just want to quote him directly as I was so taken by what he said at the end:

“We’re all here, whatever role we’re in, because we want to care for people. The NHS asks so much of us and we work so hard, but we all need to care for ourselves too”.

If you fancy watching our home made horror, donating to Unicef (the kids did a challenge this month), reading up on public narrative or finding out more about Quality Management Systems here are the links. See you next time!

Abigail Harrison is fundraising for Unicef UK (justgiving.com)

Herbert and Fred’s Goosebumps 3 – YouTube

Public-Narrative-Worksheet-Fall-2013-.pdf (harvard.edu)

Quality Management Webinar Series – https://youtu.be/eifXOL000cM