Introduction
As one of the four scholarships offered by the Florence Nightingale Foundation, the Leadership Scholarship is available to nurses, midwives and other health professionals working at a senior level in health and social care. Scholars undertake a bespoke programme geared to their individual needs, complemented by some compulsory elements. A key benefit of the scholarship is the allocation to each scholar of a very senior and significant mentor.
It was this approach to creating a personally and professionally tailored programme that was so attractive to the author who at the point of applying was a well-established executive director of nursing with fourteen years board experience. Of the multiple courses and development programmes available, none except the Florence Nightingale Leadership programme so clearly enables the scholar to define and then meet their own needs.
Background
The author is a mental health nurse whose training started in 1983 in what was the first, purpose built lunatic asylum in the country, Friern Barnet. An executive director of nursing for over fourteen years, the author had extensive board, clinical and management experience but over the years, little investment in personal development.
Learning and Development
Underpinning the learning programme of the scholarship approach was the foundation week for all scholars, Leading Change and Organisational Redesign (LCOR).
Provided by Harvard Business School LCOR was a five day residential course which enabled participants to explore the work of a number of writers including Tushman and O’Reilly (2002). An intensive course, facilitated by Harvard tutor scholars under case studies from a wide range of settings and points in history, in order to apply and test different leadership approaches.
Following the LCOR residential week was an opportunity to consider a challenge encountered at work, in a more detailed way, supported by other scholars from the course.
In small groups of two or three, scholars took it in turns to listen to a colleague’s perspective on a current challenge, and having listened, reflected with them on what might help to resolve it.
The scholar then shaped their bespoke learning and development program which included:
The Westminster Experience – True immersion in as close as one can get to a real political environment. Divided in to two teams, scholars undertook key government roles and responded to national emergencies, crises and planned events as they unfolded in real time. Political astuteness, personal style, presence and decision making as well as media handling were all valuable learning points.
RADA Communication in Business – A three day course focusing on honing personal impact and communication.
Using role play, classic scripts, vocal exercises and film work, this course built up a foundation of exercises and reflection that strengthened self-awareness and self- management.
Two day Florence Nightingale Foundation Annual Conference involved formal presentations, complemented by breakout sessions and networking.
Always an inspiring, engaging and informative event.
RADA Executive Presence for Women a three day course which offered a different insight in to how women and men communicate through evaluating and analyzing speeches, interviews, interactions and the written word, participants develop a greater awareness of the power of similarity and difference.
Patient Care Improvement Project
A patient focused quality improvement project was the required outcome as the final piece of work for the year’s programme. This presented significant challenge and opportunity in equal measure for the author who at the point of commencing the scholarship had been in a role occupied by them for over fourteen years. Half way through the year, the author was appointed to the post of Chief Executive in a different organisation and the task of orientating their project to this new role was therefore pressing.
Within the first few days of taking up the new role in June 2016, the author identified their new project. It was to redesign clinical pathways for acute mental health patients, leading to the reduction (from seventy-six to zero) in the use of private overspill beds, at a monthly cost saving to the new organisation, of over one million pounds per month. Significant improvement in the quality of care, combined with real terms cost savings was the aim of the work which deployed all the tools and techniques learned by the scholar.
Reflections
The scholarship could not have come at a better time at a significant crossroads in a career and indeed life. Time away from work, in an environment where discussions with other scholars helped to shape and challenge thinking, supported by encouragement to think differently was strikingly beneficial.
From the very start of the scholarship the author was engaged and enthused by the quality of the course and the nature of the challenge offered. LCOR was placed at exactly the right time in the year, towards the start and it set the tone and the expectation of what was to come. The discipline and luxury of spending time thinking and reflecting with others was transformational, and when it was set against a backdrop of research and evidence from contexts drawn from beyond health and social care, it created opportunities to think differently and apply new models in one’s own setting.
Techniques learned in the small groups at LCOR have been put into practice by understanding and resolving longstanding problems including using the visualisation techniques within own surroundings with powerful effect. The author’s patient care improvement project was underpinned from start to finish by the learning gained through working with others in the LCOR week. Specifically, the importance of conversations, and of listening, of seeing things differently and of using one’s whole self for good.
There have been many enriching, engaging, challenging and insightful conversations since the scholarship started. Some of the most important have been with colleagues met by the author through the small group work at LCOR and subsequently co-consulting.
A key feature of the scholarship has been the opportunity to network and as a direct result of this being able to invite another scholar to join on secondment and to bring with him, some of the leadership work he had been doing in his own trust.
There were several stand-out learning points from the year as a whole, each of which directly informed the author’s patient care improvement project;
Setting Direction and Inspiring Others
Finding the Right Leaders
Using Networks and Supporters
Conversation as an Aid to Understanding
Sharing Good Practice and Celebrating Success
In summary, not only did the scholarship lead to a significant improvement in care for multiple mental health patients and their families, but it saved the local health economy millions of pounds in real terms. The author would like to think too, that it reconnected the author with the words of Florence Nightingale herself, at exactly the right time;
‘Live Life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift – there is nothing small about it’
Florence Nightingale