Coming back to work after Christmas felt hard. In the space of just one week my body seemed to have become entirely reliant on a constant intake of chocolate, cheese, stuffing and Bacardi which it couldn’t cope without! 

Make some good trouble

One of the things that chirped me up was going to watch Matilda the musical with the boys and our friends. I had forgotten how much the story is about challenging the status quo and speaking out when things aren’t right. 

Here are a few lyrics from my favourite song in the film – ‘Naughty’

We’re told we have to do what we’re told, but surely Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty
Just because you find that life’s not fair it
Doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bear it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
Nothing will change.
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Might as well be saying
You think that it’s ok
And that’s not right!
And if it’s not right!
You have to put it right!

I loved the message around being a bit naughty and not standing for things that aren’t right – I often talk about making ‘good trouble’ when it’s for the right cause. 

It got me thinking as well about the brilliant work our Patient Safety Specialist at NWAS is doing to drive a culture of openness, speaking out about harm, shining a light on things we’ve got right and improving patient safety. I’ve been privileged to provide a little support to Carly as she’s been reviewing learning from incidents. It’s a difficult role to take in an organisation but it’s so important. 

Speaking up when things aren’t right can be hard and as Carly pointed out to me listening can also be hard too. I’ve had a few tough experiences over the years in my career when I’ve spoken up and challenged something I believed wasn’t right but it’s always been worth it and we have to make it as easy as possible and support people to speak out and to listen.

Innocent insight

It’s funny how insightful young children are. Two examples from this month – firstly Herbert cracked half of the healthcare digital strategy in 5 minutes. Whilst playing ‘doctors’ he built a Lego iPad and a series of point of care testing / scanning devices which he proceeded to use on Fred, managing to treat him at home on his own sofa. I loved that based on his relatively limited knowledge of what technology is currently available he presumed that that’s how we’d do things. 

Fred’s moment of wisdom was his realisation one day that I appear to be spread a little thin. Don’t worry though he’s figured out the solution … he suggested that I create two extra versions of myself so that, in his words, ‘one could stay at home and do the washing, one could go to work and one could stay with him all the time.’ I said I’d like a fourth one to go running, make tea etc but Herbert suggested we actually needed the fourth one for him! 

It’s all about collaboration 

It’s been a busy month with some great meetings progressing our collaborative work – here’s a few highlights:

• Digital referrals from scene: this is my number one focus at the minute. It’s such an obvious thing to do to release frontline capacity to respond to patients. There are a few complications trying to achieve it but my deputy CCIO and I are not giving up on it – as Matilda says ‘if you always take it on the chin and wear it nothing will change ‘
• I met with ICB digital leads and NHS E  North at the North West Digital leaders group which is one of my favourite collaborative meetings 
• I chaired the National Ambulance  Digital Innovation forum and also had the National AACE Digital Leaders group – we agreed to escalate pressures on BI teams which was welcome 
• I had a great session with the various teams leading change in NWAS (transformation, PMO, improvement and innovation). We progressed our work on capability building and came up with our joint shared purpose (more to come on that in the future)
• I had the Board of Directors meeting where much of the discussion was around how we collaborate and learn with system partners and there was welcome recognition of the work we’ve done to improve cyber security and support a collaborative improvement focus on handover and mental health care with system partners

Just reach out 

Quick shout out to my new mentee who reached out after I spoke about reaching out to people on my blog. We had a great first session and I’ll definitely learn lots from her. 

Away from the desk 

I committed to the Quality Directorate teams that I’d get around all our sites in January and February to hear about our work and provide an opportunity for staff to flag anything they wanted to talk about.  I’ve had some fab days out always ending up with new insights from our brilliant people, resolving concerns or having great conversations about our strategic direction – all without being behind my laptop or on emails all day long! 

‘To help people when they need us most‘

Finally, I wanted to share a family health experience. My mum was found to have a blood clot in her lung just after Christmas. I’m so grateful to 111 who she called in the very early hours of Boxing Day morning after coughing up blood. My mum thought it was just due to a bad cough but 111 sent her to the local hospital. Our purpose at NWAS is ‘to help people when they need us most’ and I’ve had so many experiences personally when 111 have been the only people I can access in my times of need and worry with the kids. Our 111 team are amazing, it’s so relentless trying to keep up with growing demand but they stick at it and are always looking for ways to improve and learn. 

My Grandma died of a Pulmonary Embolism younger than my mum and it just makes you realise how vulnerable we all are in some ways and how much we need and are lucky to have our NHS. My mum is recovering well and I just want to say a massive thank you to Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and our very own brilliant 111 service for being there when she needed them most! 

Until next time…