I applied for the Florence Nightingale Scholarship after much encouragement to do so from a colleague within the Practice Education Team. She believed I had what it took to be successful in gaining and completing the scholarship. My passion has always been the design and driving forward of improvement, patient outcomes, patient experience and patient safety. I also wanted to use the opportunity to learn more in relation to my own personal development needs and also be able to further my own career development.
Being able to spend a year dedicated to reflecting, assessing and developing my leadership capabilities was as terrifying as it was empowering. The last twelve months has impacted greatly upon me.
The scholarship aims were divided in to 3 categories:
- Personal Leadership development
- Career leadership objectives
- Project delivery
An initial leadership assessment identified my personal learning needs as primarily:
- Development of personal impact
- Development of self belief
- Development of political and strategic influencing skills
Learning activities undertaken to address these included:
- Attendance at the Florence Nightingale conference in London
- Leading Change through Organisational Renewal module (five day residential course)
- Attendance at the IHI Patient Experience Conference and Head Quarters in Boston Massachusetts
- The Westminster Experience
- Co-Consulting groups: focused on personal effectiveness and questioning techniques
- Attendance at Harvard Executive Business School Boston Massachusetts: The Women’s Leadership Forum
- Personal Mentorship with Professor Trish Morris-Thompson
- Visit to Newcastle with Catherine Ashbrook-Raby to observe their local Patient Experience programme
- Shadowing programme with senior health executives across Northern Ireland and within NHSCT Patient Improvement Project:
The initial focus of my project was to look at key performance indicators relating to the nursing profession and integrate these with the internationally recognised Global Trigger Tool (early warning system). Using the Department of Health for Northern Irelands Quality 2020 consultation phase and the allocated task 6 for NHSCT, the aim was to design and test a tool that staff could use at ward level to support the monitoring of quality performance whilst also availing of an early warning system. It would also set out subsequent reporting, action and escalation processes.
This was a Department of Health initiative and the work was contextualised in relation to continuous quality improvement and the need to monitor and assure the quality and patient safety of patients/clients within NI. This then necessitated an innovative, creative and evidence based approach in order to ensure the assessment tool could be used to greatest effect whilst also focusing on all the right indicators to provide assurance and safeguards.
The outcome of the project was the development of a quality assurance tool, tested across the five Health Care Trusts within Northern Ireland and presented to the Department of Health for further analysis and future direction.
Taking time to understand myself was perhaps one of the most important gains and platforms on which I built throughout the year. The opportunity for development was amazing. Having the support structure and funding to design and build a bespoke agreed programme meant that the impact and outcomes of being a Florence Nightingale Scholar were wide ranging and have, I believe, impacted on how I now perform my job on a daily basis.