As a founding member of the Health Foundation’s Q Community, I have been on an inspiring journey over the last two years, exploring how we can build and develop quality improvement more proactively in our organisations. There are now 135 Q members in the South West, and recently I was delighted to accept the new role of Q Convener for the region.
We will act as ambassadors for Q, promoting the vision and values of the community, including creativity, co-production, inclusivity and collaboration.
Q is the Health Foundation’s growing community of people committed to improving the quality of health and care across the UK.
The Convener is a brand new role and the South West is one of three areas where it is being piloted. We will act as ambassadors for Q, promoting the vision and values of the community, including creativity, co-production, inclusivity and collaboration. An exciting development is the plan to create a Commons Stewardship Group for the South West, which will help shape the next steps for growing our Q community.
My first event in this new role was the Q Community Masterclass in Taunton on 11 October. This was the second of three masterclasses and was focused on ‘networks for collaboration’. People were full of good ideas about how we can increase the reach of the Q Community to have greater impact.
The skills session stepped through the ‘5C’ model for ‘effective networks for improvement’, which you can read more about on The Health Foundation website. Q members then worked together on pitches to an expert panel on their proposals to spread the quality improvement message.
Our aspiration is to link Q into the South West’s Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships. With greater networking and collaboration, the network has huge potential to support their plans and respond to the many challenges in health and care across the region.
The final Q Masterclass is scheduled to take place in Cornwall on 28 February 2018 and will focus on ‘hackathon’ methodology to work together on difficult challenges. I encourage Q members to save the date and look forward to seeing you there.