How did you first get involved in improvement, and what has been your journey since then?
I have been involved in improvement all of my working life and that journey started while working for a furniture retailer in 1982. I was working on improvement projects across stores, call centres, manufacturing, logistics and home delivery. My improvement journey continued when I started to work in the NHS in 2008 working in commissioning in a primary care trust, providing support services at a commissioning support unit and in my work in NHS Improvement and NHS England.
At the moment I am working on an improvement project to embed person and family centred care via a new care partnership policy which will be applicable across primary, secondary, tertiary, and social care as well as outpatient appointments. This policy will ensure that anyone in receipt of care can nominate someone as a partner in care who can support them psychologically, emotionally, and physically at any time of the day or night. This work was initiated as a result of direct patient and carer experience via a digital story. This is one of four national policies that have come from two digital stories. Stories are an improvement methodology, but few recognise them as such.
What most inspires you professionally?
People who put people first as relationships are much more important than process and procedures. I love to work with people who value person and family centred care and who work to improve experience of care through staff, carer and patient experience.
Can you share a hard-won lesson you’ve learnt about what makes for a successful (or unsuccessful) improvement project?
Working in partnership with patients, carers and people who are in receipt of and who deliver care, is paramount. I work in co-production on all of my improvement projects, however working with different programmes of work across national, regional and local organisations, this ethos of co-production isn’t always the guiding principle. There is often a leadership challenge amongst senior leaders where co-production is talked about but true co-production involves ceding power and working in partnership. My lessons learned are about the importance of leadership, culture and learning in improvement projects; having the courage to challenge when the behaviours don’t match up to the rhetoric.
What change could we make that would do most to embed continuous improvement in health and care?
Really embedding creative practice into continuous improvement. Using stories, performance, dance and poetry to shape improvement projects through initiation, implementation and evaluation.
Why did you join Q?
I wanted the opportunity to meet people who had a passion for improvement and I was lucky to be part of the founding membership of the community.
What new connections have you made as a result of joining the Q community – and what have you learnt so far?
I have met so many different people through the Q community, from cardiac surgeons to Total Quality Management (TQM) and Sigma Six specialists. Often I have met people in roles I wouldn’t routinely work with. As a result of connections made in Q, I have shared my storytelling work across many different settings
Can you tell us about something you’re currently working on that Q members might be able to get involved with?
I have set up a Special Interest Group on the power of storytelling in health, which is an opportunity for people who want to learn more about using different creative forms of stories to achieve improvement.
My passion for storytelling came from my own personal experience of end of life care when in 2014 my husband Seth was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer.
Our care was not person or family centred and despite wanting to die at home Seth died in an acute hospital because no one listened or responded to what was important to us
I shared our experience of care via a film, a play and educational resource and spent two years outside of the NHS doing improvement work using Seth’s Story.
When I returned to the NHS in 2018 I was determined to create momentum around stories for improvement and through the heads of the Patient Experience Network.
I was able to support 150 providers with digital storytelling training, embed stories at the National Quality Board and co-produce a storytelling impact and outcomes framework, as well explore storytelling performance, poetry and other creative arts.
I am now moving to a new role at National Institute for Health and Care Excellence where they are keen to explore stories as a form of evidence in their work. Join our Special Interest Group and learn more about this personal and professional work across the last 10 years.
Join the Power of Storytelling in Health group.
Sign up for our upcoming events:
12.00 – 13.00, 30 July 2024 | The impact of storytelling on health: creating an emotional scaffold to support QI
12.00 – 13.00, 23 October 2024 | The impact of storytelling in health: creative communication in health and care