Special Interest Group
Philosophy and ethics for health care improvement
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Latest group activity
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Hilda Campbell MBE posted an update 4 months ago
Article which may be of interest to reflect on the importance of ‘thinking time’ as a legitimate part of the activities which support quality improvement and a work life balance https://asana.com/resources/what-is-deep-work
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Laura Proctor posted an update 4 months ago
Hello me again! I’m doing a quite a bit of reflection at the moment, you may have noticed @Hilda! hehe
I will leave people with this thought…in a science and IT driven world could we create more space to consider faith, spirituality and God in our work and healthcare world…..
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Living our values and seeing ourselves as part of something more than ourselves I think matters for people working in health and social care as well as the values which underpin the agencies they work for which I think need to be in sync for people to fulfil their potential for themselves and others. It helps us when times are challenging and…Read more
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Thank you Hilda – yes building compassion, care and kindness are definitely values I think we share and weaving them into our work is a must. Thanks lots to think about 🙂
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Laura Proctor posted an update 4 months, 1 week ago
Hello and happy new year all!
I have been pondering today the question why can’t humans co-operate on a large scale? On the face of it you might say different beliefs, values, interests, politics which I’d agree with…
What I’m really interested in is do we all need to co-operate for improvement to happen? What would it take to improve human…Read more
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Hi Laura
Your question is one I have been seeking the answer to for some time and prompted the development of the Jigsaw Lid concept and toolkit, which we have since went on to apply in various situations. Here is a link for more info. https://www.cope-scotland.org/wellbeing-tips/entry/finding-common-priorities-matter (Its a hit and a miss when…Read more
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This sounds like a very positive venture Hilda! What a great ethos and principle to work by. I love the notion of collaboration and connectedness and I would love to consider ways in which I can encourage this in my work and attitude. Is there a way of accessing the jigsaw lids resource? Should others wish to use it?
Best wishes, Laura 🙂
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Hi Laura
The materials are on our site, we are currently looking to update the site and our downloads and are in the process of doing a podcast about the lids. What may be easier if you want, is to schedule in a catch up online, I can show you how its been used in different circumstances and give you an editable PDF which you can then use in your…Read more
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Good morning Hilda,
Sounds great, thank you! I have time today, tomorrow or next Monday? Can be pretty flexible at the moment too.
Bw,
Laura.
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Hi Laura
Do you have time before 11.30am on 9th or before 11.45am on 11th Jan? my direct email is hilda@cope-scotland.org I can send a zoom invite if that works for you, just let me know if any of the times on the 9th or 11th suit you
Hilda 🙂
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Employees in many very large International organisations manage to cooperate on a large scale and of course our armed services. I have experience of both particularly on a very fast production line where, for example, a new car comes off the line every minute. In can making, where I also have experience it’s 100 or more times faster. A great deal…Read more
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Yes that’s very true Thomas and you are quite right, some large companies do manage to co-operate successfully. Thank you for this reminder! I wonder what we can take from how they do it? Also does the fact they are dealing with inanimate objects make a difference? It shouldn’t should it? Thanks for your thoughts.
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Talking of inanimate objects have a look at: https://q.health.org.uk/document/nhs-products-chatgpt/
and I’m not sure that it should make a lot of difference if inanimate or not. -
I do think dealing with ‘animate subjects’ rather than inanimate objects odes make a difference. First, because the subject has preferences, values, experiences, knowledge and their own goals and interests which will shape how care and healthcare services should be delivered to them (the differences may be more exaggerated in some areas of care…Read more
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Love this question Laura! I’ve pondered it myself a lot too. I think a lot of our perceived disagreements and conflicting values/beliefs are exaggerated by a polarised political system. And if we focused more on our actual needs and our dreams for the future we’d find we are more alike than we think. In particular at a local scale, where it can…Read more
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Thanks for this stimulating comment Laura 🙂
You’re also absolutely right that there are some big obstructions to certain kinds of cooperation–the COP climate summits and their consistently underwhelming negotiations and declarations are a great example, and organisational failures in the NHS and other social institutions can reflect failures…Read more
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I do not disagree with you but their must be a degree of work standardisation for improvement to be sustainable. It’s the degree of standardisation that is important to ensure that work is not being restrictive. I’m now using the terms NHS Lean and NHS Standard Process To identify how to document ‘work’ to enable improvement and safety assessment…Read more
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Laura Proctor replied a minute ago
Thanks everyone for your thoughts and responses to this question. I agree co-operation isn’t dependent on agreement, people of different backgrounds, values, beliefs can work very well together. I also think about the early covid pandemic days when NHS teams pulled together even more to co-operate and this was s…Read more
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Perhaps the desire to cooperate (act together for the good) is never simple to implement and in real-politik standards are minimally-satisfiers for democratically achievable aims. Sometimes experts disagree, but sometimes they would choose policies deemed too expensive.
” For surgery alone, there are some 222 different procedures across the 13…Read more -
* I agree working with animate objects does add a greater degree of complexity and consideration. My original sentence contained a typo as it said doesn’t.
I wonder if co-operation needs to come at a higher level in terms of values which support specific decisions.
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Thomas John Rose posted an update 4 months, 2 weeks ago
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Lean and Standard Work in the NHS. Engineering and manufacturing organisations have been implementing Lean and Standard Work for many years but because of the background of these organisations they have been able to adapt their design and implementation of these techniques to suit the nature and needs of t…Read more
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Hilda Campbell MBE posted an update 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Following on from earlier post, this piece may be of interest https://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/case-studies/cope-scotland It was a case study looking at the work which we did with communities.
”It demonstrates how working closely and in partnership with communities makes the best use of resources, generates new capacity and greater agency,…Read more
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Hilda Campbell MBE posted an update 4 months, 3 weeks ago
I am not sure if this link offers anything further to the conversation about the challenges that staff can face when seeking to show initiative and offer alternative ways of doing things https://www.rcn.org.uk/About-us/Our-Influencing-work/Policy-briefings/sco-pol-nursing-at-the-edge-case-study-rebel-with-a-cause It is the story of my own…Read more
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Great to read about the story and impact of COPE, Hilda — really disappointing that you lost your NHS funding… hopefully people are still finding ways to access your care when they need it even if it isn’t an official NHS procurement option! Very dispiriting how bureaucratic procedures can get in the way of health and care
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Hi Polly
It’s a long story, the key point is, we were never about growing an empire, but an idea. We wanted to create a model led by lived experience that the health board would be curious about and want to adapt and adopt into the mainstream. However, the model worked, but it was totally different from what currently existed, and the ‘…Read more
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Hilda Campbell MBE posted an update 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Hi
I notice sometimes when I reply to some emails with an attachment it bounces back. To make sure anyone interested in a copy of the values poster can access one, I have added it to the document section of this SIG 🙂
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Hilda Campbell MBE created the document Values Poster 4 months, 3 weeks ago
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Hilda Campbell MBE posted an update 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Hello Laura and all
I am curious as to the motivation to work in health and social care if it is not to make things better. My interpretation of things being better is a lower incidence of ill health, improved interventions when someone is unwell and strategies to cope when the condition is ongoing. My focus being the quality of life of p…Read more
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Laura Proctor posted an update 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Good afternoon all, this sounds like interesting group, it caught my eye with the mention of ethics. What seems noteworthy to me is that most, if not all health care professionals go into their careers because they have an aspiration to make things better! I wonder where ethics support these staff and how senior managers and leaders ensure these…Read more
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Hi Laura, thanks for joining our SIG! I appreciate the focus in your comment on how staff can be supported by managers, leaders, and ethical codes. There can often be a great deal of emphasis placed on the intentions and attitudes of individual staff when characterising professional ethics, but having appropriate institutional support and…Read more
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Thank you Polly for your welcome and reply. Lovely to meet you! I’m interested to hear more about the institutional support and incentive structures please can you elaborate on these ideas please to help me understand what these might contain. The reason I ask is that the messages that seem to come from the Trust include messages that when…Read more
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I guess I was thinking about a number of things which might affect the ability of healthcare professionals to act on their aspirations to make things better:
– some more structural, e.g. if there are workforce shortages, staff may not have much time to reflect on and think about improving their ways of working, because they are fighting fires t…Read more
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I guess the point I’m making is that when it comes to improvement, many things fall outside of the frontline teams power to sort, usually the meatier things that hold a lot of influence are not the quick wins. In this case, senior leaders (meaning any manager who is above the clinical lead in a team) are in a position where they are expected to…Read more
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Yes that makes lots of sense and I think connects to what I’m saying about too. There are much bigger structural and institutional issues which affect how staff are enabled to deliver healthcare and how it’s experienced by patients. But often these are sidelined in conversations about improvement which focus on small changes/projects which might…Read more
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Yes Polly I entirely agree. Particularly agree with this bit……. But often these are sidelined in conversations about improvement which focus on small changes/projects which might make marginal improvements in processes and outcomes but miss the big systemic issues. In this way Improvement becomes reduced (in my opinion) and their is a risk…Read more
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Thomas John Rose posted an update 4 months, 4 weeks ago
An interesting report:
https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Recovery-through-Reform_Paper.pdf
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Thank you for sharing, I have shared this with a colleague looks an interesting read from first glance 🙂
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Thomas John Rose posted an update 5 months ago
I read a lot about a ‘Learning Health System’ but what is it? I think that two aspects of healthcare should be equally represented in such a system. These two aspect are: 1. Clinical and 2. Operational. The output from a Quality Management System would add Learning to both aspects.
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The only way that you learn from error is by changing what you do. First you have to know and understand what you do. How do you do that?
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Hello, Thomas. I am not sure I understand or accept as true “The only way that you learn from error is by changing what you do”. Is ‘error’ being used in a narrower and/or more technical sense than we might reasonably interpret ‘mistake’. Can I not learn that something I did was a mistake, and learn from it, and then try to change what I do if a…Read more
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Vikki, Thanks foe your comment. I guess so. I think that. although I’m not sure, I’m referring to what action we take after the publication of a report fallowing a major enquiry into an issue in a trust. But – it should be so after any recorded mistake – that if is of there was a no blame culture and. pipe dream, some form of standard work in the…Read more
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Maria Dorthea Skov posted an update 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Hello philosophers!
On Monday Dec 4th @12-1pm Q is hosting a conversation on health inequalities and equity that I think you all would find interesting.
Drawing from an ongoing 5 year research project – by Dr John Ford and Dr Lucy Johnson at Queen Mary University of London – this session will provide a space for crucial conversations to tak…Read more
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About this group
This group is for people who are interested in discussing the fundamental purposes of health care improvement and some of the ethical issues that arise in planning, conducting or researching improvement. It is meant for anyone who is interested in asking these ‘big questions’ but it assumes no previous knowledge of philosophy or ethics. Members who care about these questions will bring their own real world perspectives on managing these questions, their own various professional and disciplinary expertise, and a willingness to have a conversation about conceptual and ethical uncertainties.
The main vehicle for the Special Interest Group will be a series of online discussions on specific topics in this area, with recommended pre-reading, held roughly every two months.
