What inspired me this week?
- Natalie, our team’s new PA/business support officer helping me to get my calendar under control and make sure I’m directing my atention to the most important things.
- The kindness of a stranger who tracked down my oldest son on Facebook to tell him they’d found his brother’s wallet in the street and handed it in at a local police station. I retrieved it the same day, bank card still inside.
What connections did I make?
- A call with Yinka who is leading some work across the digital and health informatics professions. I was able to share what we did on Agenda for Change job descriptions when I was digital profession lead at NHS Digital.
- An intro call with Tony, an experienced user-centred design leader who has joined NHSX in another directorate. It’s great to see more UCD professionals joining in senior roles.
What leadership teamwork did I see?
- A couple of good delivery review sessions with the projects in our digital transformation programme for urgent and emergency care.
- I was invited to join the ambulance services’ digital leads at their regular meeting. There’s great collaboration across this sector, and constructive challenge for the national teams that work with them.
- I also joined a workshop run by NHS England and NHS Improvement colleagues focusing on urgent and emergency care improvement for one of the new Integrated Care Systems (ICS).
How did I uphold the NHS Constitution?
“rather than being passive recipients of healthcare, patients also play a key role in managing their own health and should be actively supported by the NHS to do so” – Handbook to the NHS Constitution for England
On Twitter, I agreed with Vanessa’s discomfort about the phrase “patient activation”. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of using it before. “Activation” makes sense in commercial customer experience where an organisation needs to get people engaged in its service. Health by definition is all about patients. It’s on us to activate our concern for their lived experience.
What do I need to take care of?
- I am worried about our team’s bandwidth to do our bit towards a piece of work led by another team. I’ve asked to see it broken down more into who is expected to do what and when, so we can see if there’s a gap or not.
- This week I realised I had dropped the ball on one piece of work and had to be reminded to move it on to the next step. I will try not to let that happen again.
How many days did I get some exercise?
1/5 – I went out for a pre-work bike ride in Thursday, but felt a twinge in a leg muscle and hobbled around for the rest of the day. All better now, and a lesson to warm up properly before leaving th house on cold mornings.
Matt Edgar writes here 