Abstract
I started my Florence Nightingale Scholarship journey in January 2016, having been actively encouraged by my line manager who was a previous scholar, to apply. The opportunity to work with other senior leaders appealed to me, along with the opportunity to further my research into nursing leadership.
I wanted to use the scholarship to enhance my leadership skills, I wanted to learn from others working in the NHS, but I didn’t know what I needed to enhance my leadership skills. However, following a comprehensive initial assessment with a very knowledgeable coach Sue Machell, of me as a person, manager, leader and nurse which identified my strengths and weakness, and gave great insight into areas that required improvement to enable me to build on my leadership capacity, this was critical in selecting the leadership courses and experiences that I took through the scholarship.
I first met some of my fellow scholars at the Co Consulting group in March, I learnt so much from them, this experience facilitated by Sue Machell, was an opportunity to discuss some of the issues we were struggling with within our personal lives, through facilitated discussions we were able to support each other. Throughout the scholarship I have really valued being part of a community of scholars, sharing practice issues, supporting each other and learning together. This community will continue to support and grow beyond this year, and I am very thankful for this.
I chose to attend Harvard Business School to attend the “Leadership for the 21stCentury; Chaos, Conflict & Courage, as I believed that this would help me to develop the skills and confidence I needed to be able to exercise my leadership skills and individual traits effectively to help me to support other clinical leaders within my trust to face the challenges ahead. The course made me reflect on my strongly held beliefs regarding not only leadership, but the NHS itself.
The RADA communication skills for leaders, 3 day course helped me to develop my communication style, by taking me out of my comfort zone, building my presentation skills, influencing skills and in turn building my confidence.
Working with the hugely experienced mentor Liz Morgan provided me with the support and the challenge I needed, she also helped me to build my resilience for the changes I was experiencing within my Trust.
I wanted to use the scholarship as an opportunity to explore my interest in Nurse leadership, more specifically I wanted to understand why nurses in the UK appear to not have a “voice” compared to nurses in the US, and if they are truly to be patients advocates they need to have a voice. I soon realised that this was a huge project. Following a meeting with Liz, and discussing the influences that nurses do have in the UK, I decided to look at the attributes of a nurse leader who is able to influence service policy within neonatal care. I planned my visits to hospitals in New York that were the equivalent to our level 3 Neonatal Intensive Care Units here in the UK. Unfortunately, on touch down in New York the planned visits were cancelled.
Although my planned visits to hospitals in the UK were cancelled due to no fault of my own, the hospitals that I managed to visit gave me significant insight into collaborative leadership and mutual respect between the nursing and medical staff. Their seemed to be very strong mentorship programmes, and leadership development for nurses was ongoing even post degree. It was following these visits that I challenged myself to look at how I could get collaborative leadership between the medical and nursing leaders within the trust, out of this my challenging patient improvement project was born. Working with the patient experience team within the trust and through engagement and leadership at all levels of the trust collaborative leadership has been achieved.
Whilst in New York I was fortunate to make contact with, Linda Turchin, a Professor from Fairmont University, who added a new dimension to my leadership debate, this was feminism and its effect in the US something I had not previously considered.
As a result of all my learning, I have achieved collaborative working with not only the medical and nursing staff but also with patients through a number of projects, all of which have had demonstrable benefits. One such project has been shortlisted for a national award.
Probably the most collaboratively involves the Family and Patient Advisory Council, and the setting up of a number of co design groups for issues relating to feedback. Using a simple co design methodology, used in New Zealand healthcare system which starts with a listening session and then maps gaps between where service did not meet expectations and what could have made it better, with ongoing feedback to the patient group over a period of time. Initially these groups were looking at food, maternal mental health, the partners journey, breastfeeding support and tongue tie. These initial sessions were attended by staff involved in the service and initially these staff were quite defensive, but after listening to the service users experience were keen to make the services better. We have now moved to full services, putting the spotlight on their services and asking for feedback, the “spotlights” on services are where the clinical director, head of nursing for that area, and interested staff present together their service, and then open up to the floor for questions. Following this the council and staff break into groups to discuss how the service could be made better, thereby co designing the service. It’s great to see such collaborative working.
The change within the trust has been inspiring, the patient experience lead and myself had to find ways to engage staff at all levels, NHS staff feel drained and demoralised from constant busy working conditions, so any solution needed to be light hearted and capture the imagination to nudge a change rather than be heavy handed. We both didn’t expect the outcomes to be as good as they were. What we have is collaborative leadership at all levels of the trust which involves patients.
The Head of Patient Experience has been asked to talk about her experiences at national conferences, and the delivery suite team has been shortlisted for a HSJ award for their Lessons Learned Dramatically.
Although I am at the end of my scholarship, I believe my journey will continue, my self-reflection and commitment to operate my leadership style differently and more collaboratively will be of greater benefit to any Trust which I am working. The experiences that I have had have enabled me to grow and develop. The value of what I have learnt through these positive experiences, even though challenging at times, and most definitely stretch out of my comfort zone, I have influenced improvements I never imagined I could, by challenging my blinkered vision I have achieved so much.