September update

We thought this month was planned and would see a smooth launch of our report. We had our final Project Group and Advisory Group meetings planned and anticipated a spike in activity around dissemination and some tidying up of the budget as the main things on our “To Do” list.

Our Project Group meeting went well, we were all systems go. It was sad drawing the final meeting to a close, this project has a been a significant feature in our lives for 2 years, however it is nice to know we have a face to face reflection planned in October.
We were still adding to our learning log during that final meeting and felt it would be helpful in October to support our reflection.

For all our planning, thanks especially to our great Project Manager Trish, we could not have anticipated the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second. It felt odd to be considering what should happen to the report and meetings at such a time, however necessary.

We took the decision to delay publication by a week, which felt respectful and appropriate.

The time gifted by the delay in publication allowed us to deal with a report related issue which would have been more difficult to resolve post publication.
This made me think of the saying “every cloud has a silver lining”. As devastating as the pandemic has been, it has presented an opportunity for us to be funded to highlight the work done by Community Hospitals. Without the pandemic, some of the project group were unlikely to have had the time to be involved, at least in the early days.

Our project has not been plain sailing, but it has been humbling, rewarding, fascinating and provided all of us involved opportunities to grow personally and professionally.
So now we look forward. Report publication day is being planned. Our reflection event is planned. Publication of our article is pending. The Diary of a Project will be finalised post our reflection.

Our focus will now move to how we use our Community Hospital Special Interest Group to continue to share the learning from this.

I ended our Project Group thanking the team for their time, expertise and commitment to making the project happen. We also want to say thank you Q for your funding, input and support – you made it all possible.