Weeknotes s04e10

TL;DR: Rewired 2022. Group Exec Away Day. Failing to juggle all the balls.

[week ending 18/03/2022]

Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? Loads of people and too many to name this week after a trip to Rewired. Really good to meet people I’ve come to feel I know through Twitter and other sources in real life for the first time.

Nice to see this legend after such a long time. Should have told him where the camera was on my phone to he could look in the right direction…

What would you have liked to do more of? I only managed to sketchnote a couple of talks at Rewired. There were also a few talks that clashed with when I was speaking or I was looking at a demo on a stand. Although it was hassle to be back travelling and walking round a conference for two days is surprisingly tiring, I’d have never maintained the same level of concentration and interaction on a virtual conference.

What do you wish you could have changed? There are still loads of challenges to meet the demand on the Health Intelligence team, with Business Planning for the 2022/23 year, the Integrated Governance Report for Boards and Committees and data feeds to various projects to name just a few. At the minute, our work demands far exceed our capacity, but at this time of year, pretty much everything has a fixed timescale so can’t be deferred or re-scoped. Martin and I have been discussing what we do about trying address this going forward as the current situation isn’t sustainable.

I spoke on a panel at Rewired, which I realised was wholly white male. Earlier on this year I was asked to be on a panel at a different event and I said I’d only join if it was diverse. I failed to twig that this time and need to make that my default action first question in future.

What did you learn? Tom Loosemore did a great opening keynote on Day 1 of Rewired where he gave his reflections on applying Digital in healthcare.

He said:

1. People in Health are amazing and the prize is huge
2. Small, empowered teams are the secret to changing everything
3. Do less, better
4. EPRs are necessary but not sufficient
5. To digitise should be to strengthen relationships not to automate them away
6. Put more energy into alignment than technology
7. Fix your letters

I was incredibly impressed with the demo from Nuance, where Alistair (one of the CCIOs from NGH) dictated a discharge letter with brilliant accuracy in a very noisy conference environment, with software that had not been trained for him. Potential to save loads of time to give back to care across many areas.

Alistair at the Nuance stand

What did you enjoy? Getting my face printed on a cup of coffee at the Olympus stand (thanks to Amy Freeman). Dead wierd drinking yourself.

We had a Group Exec away day, where we changed the agenda from being one about our team development to discussing a number of themes that we’ve been overdue having the time to discuss. We talked about Clinical Collaboration, Culture, Quality Improvement, Making the Day Job Easier, our role in the ICS. We then made a first stab at a set of criteria to help us prioritise our work going into the new financial year.

We held the UHN Leadership Bookclub, talking about Transforming Healthcare by Charles Kenny, which is about the Virginia Mason Production System. It was a good discussion and the book had clearly energised us all in the tantalising potential it described. I’m still looking forward to the review of the NHS Trusts who were part of the partnership arrangement from 2015.

I managed to join the KGH Performance Review meeting (having missed the NGH one due to being at Rewired). We’ve started these up again after a long gap, and I think we managed to get the balance a bit better this time as we got to spend more time talking about succcesses and shared learning. Great to hear the continued progress on falls reduction in particular.

What did you achieve? I sorted out the draft agenda for the Digital Hospital Committee in May — a whole 2 months early!

I did some more work with the two hospital COOs on the winter planning (for next winter can you believe) and agreed what things we’ll put in/leave out of a Board report for later this month.

What are you looking forward to next week?

• Two demo days of all the new stuff coming on board through TIF
• Doing a (virtual) lecture at Newcastle Uni
• Northants CIO/CCIO forum

Interesting Stuff read/consumed:

• This is me …… Dione Rogers. So great when you see people step out in to working in the open and they smash it. Nice on Dione!
• 2 years later and a book announcement by Ben Holliday
• Why Some People Get Burned Out and Others Don’t
  by Kandi Wiens and Annie McKee at HBR. “research suggests that emotional intelligence (EI) supports superior coping abilities and helps people deal with chronic stress and prevent burnout.”

Books finished this week:

• Fiction: .
• Non-Fiction:

Currently Reading:

• Fiction: A Good Hanging by Ian Rankin.
• Non-Fiction: Down Under by Bill Bryson.