With work and the NHS the way that it is these days, it is really easy to take your eye off things like continuing professional development (CPD). As our roles evolve and become more complex, spinning the plates of CPD becomes an increasingly demanding task. I got myself into a corner a few years ago […]
While Quality Improvement (QI) is enjoying a surge in popularity in health services, it can also suffer from an image problem. I’ve been told that it’s a fad, a management trend, and not evidenced based. I generally don’t quite get what these objections are about. Often in medicine when we come up against problems, these […]
The reality of fewer psychiatrists is a problem that is not going to go away […]
I enjoyed reading Victoria Twigg’s piece on the training needs of Generation Y recently. It is obvious we need to think much more about what attracts people into medicine and why people want to stay given that we’re in the middle of a recruitment crisis. Having a conversation about the future and what sustains us […]
I have been talking about failure a lot at the moment. How it should be encouraged and celebrated. We all do it often enough, so we might as well try to enjoy it. Being open to failure and learning from it is a key skill in quality improvement (QI). The more you do it, the […]
An excessive focus on systems, policy, and performance without talking about the people involved can exclude, undermine, and disillusion those we want to bring about change in the NHS, says Billy Boland. […]
Two different people told me I inspired them last week. How cool is that? I wasn’t even fishing for compliments (it has been known). They were actual, spontaneous, genuine acts of generous feedback. I’ve noticed people say this to me more these days. Each time it’s a gift. Something to delight in and reflect on. […]
It’s been really rewarding discussing quality improvement (QI) with colleagues at my trust. We’ve set up a few different resources for people to make use of. My favourite of these so far is something we’re calling a QI forum. Essentially it’s an unstructured meeting where we discuss QI in general with whoever turns up. We’re […]
I’ve become somewhat of a Quality Improvement #QI geek in the last year or so. Since first getting my head around the concept, I’m now an enthusiast and have witnessed first hand how useful it is as an approach to improve services and the quality of what we do. I still firmly believe it takes […]
At this most reflective time of year, I found myself in a conversation last week about New Year’s resolutions. Thinking about my most and least successful attempts it occurred to me that I’d foolishly blogged my resolutions for 2015 around this time last year. With dread, I clicked through to see what I’d committed to. […]