It’s becoming a bit of a habit as an opening gambit for the blog, but I want to start today with more thanks to everyone who responded to my ask last week to be open and honest about the true nature of our culture at the Trust.
I have had so many people either drop me a note or say to me in meetings or in person that they appreciated the sense and sentiment. Most agreed that there is lots to be proud of when it comes to the way we do things at ELHT, but there are always exceptions and there is room for improvement in everything.
Understanding it fully and properly is clearly going to take some time and it isn’t something I would want to rush at, even if I could, but please do be assured I am committed to exploring all aspects in a variety of ways.
As ever, if you have any further thoughts, feedback or suggestions as to how we might do this or anything else, just let me know.
What I do feel completely confident about is that every member of the Executive Team and the wider Trust Board are absolutely as one on this topic and making sure colleagues in all services and settings are holding true to our vision and values is a very high – if not the highest – priority for us.
I say this on the basis that it strikes directly to the experience of patients and their families in every element of their treatment and care. I also agree with the widely known theory that valued people are happier and that happier people do the very best job they can.
Whilst I see motivated and energised people doing amazing things every day across ELHT, I would be daft If I didn’t want this to be the case for everyone.
It’s good to know that the topic was also front and centre in discussions at a Board strategy session earlier this week. The agenda was loaded with complex issues and challenges for us to unpack but how we tackle and triumph against adversity as people is very much at the heart of our approach as a group.
At the beginning of the session we welcomed colleagues from our DERI team (which stands for the Directorate of Education, Research and Innovation).
In their sights the team, who are ambitious, committed and have made incredible progress in recent years, continue to aim for university hospitals status and wanted to share with our new Chairman and Board colleagues what this entails for them and the wider organisation as a whole. This will require a significant amount of work to achieve and we agreed that the team will produce a plan on how we get there step by step.
I am proud of everything DERI has delivered so far with clinical trials with a fantastic record of recruiting patients and delivering improved outcomes for them and their families. More recently, we have attracted significant national funding for our own research projects too. As Daren Subar – one of the most compelling voices in research at ELHT – told the Board: “This area of the Trust is an essential organ you cannot do without.” It’s not something we choose to do, it is a mainstream and important part of who we are.
I don’t think anyone around the table or across the Trust would disagree, but my role and that of colleagues on the Board is to effectively triangulate asks like this with the totality of everything that we need to do and deliver too.
With this in mind, it was more than a happy co-incidence that the Board was also provided with a refreshed version of the Trust’s overall strategy to review.
This was a brilliant piece of work which had been done by the Service Development Team to map ELHT’s objectives against national policy, the NHS England Long Term Plan, the recently published aims of the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) and the priorities of our partners in our own geographical ‘Place’ or area.
You can see from that sentence that it’s a complex picture to harmonise and so I want to say a huge thank you to the team that has worked so hard to make sense of it all – and then provided assurance that the Trust is indeed appropriately aligned.
We also received an update on the NHS Planning Guidance for 2023-24 and, as part of this, the areas for focus from colleagues at the Provider Collaborative Board (PCB) which includes a further ask to focus on four key areas:
· Grip and control – making sure our processes are robust and we stick to our plans to deliver
· Efficiency and utilisation – making the most of what we have to ensure we’re driving productivity across all areas for patients – and not just in East Lancashire but across the county and into South Cumbria
· Aligning structures effectively – making sure that where we can we work with other health and social care teams to standardise and improve services
· Clinical configuration – currently too many services are provided in too many areas by too few people. We need to determine what this means for ELHT as part of the wider system
As part of this, it is recognised that we are still recovering from the pandemic and, in particular, that we cannot take our eye off waiting lists for elective surgery for a moment. To this point and to highlight the progress we are making every day let me especially mention our reduction in cancer waiting times – which has been a huge team effort to deliver for the benefit of patients and their families.
To achieve all of the above feels immense to everyone in every part of the NHS but as one colleague often says: “If you do the things you’ve always done, you’ll get the things you’ve always got.”
He is spot on. Surely, the only way we can achieve all of this is to work together more effectively across geographical boundaries and innovate to fundamentally transform the way we’re doing things.
Never forget either that people are at the centre of our ambitions – your family and mine – who need care and support.
On the DERI ask, of course we want and need to support research and innovation – it is at the heart of transformation and progress – but how to free up our clinical colleagues to do this when we have such challenging targets to reduce elective waiting lists is a difficult circle to square. It becomes ever more with vacancies across the NHS nationally and an eye-watering financial pressure to reduce budgets immediately and in coming years.
I said at Board there was no magic wand to resolve this and I meant it. We won’t fix it overnight. But we rightly plan and identify how we progress – taking the ‘what’, understanding the ‘how’ and adding timescales, milestones and processes to get there.
In the meantime, we continue to do everything possible to provide safe, personal and effective care for anyone that needs it. This brings me back to colleagues – across every single corner of the Trust – being pivotal to our success and whilst the current landscape is very difficult to navigate, if people understand what we’re aiming for they can do their bit to contribute. That they are valued and encouraged as part of a positive culture will be critical to our success.
To this point, let me end with a real story about a real person who epitomises everything I have just said – Jamie Swales, Lead Advanced Clinical Practitioner and Deputy Clinical Lead, in the Critical Care team.
Jamie is someone who operates as part of a great team in an incredibly complex and pressured area of the Trust – and moreover he does it in great style, delivering results himself and inspiring others along the way too.
In truth there are many ‘Jamies’ at ELHT but I want to give him a special mention as he leaves us later this month and, while we’re so very sad to see him go, I have no doubt his legacy will continue.
Jamie, thank you for everything you have done during your time at ELHT, it is recognised and appreciated more than you can ever know. We will miss you, but we wish you every single success and happiness in your next adventure. I have no doubt you’ll be amazing.
To everyone else – the hundreds and thousands of colleagues that hold us together every day – thank you for everything you are doing for each other and for our patients too.
Living and breathing the culture we want to see, now and for the future of every single person we serve and work with, is what makes it thrive.
Take care,
Martin