Solutions Focused Thinking for the NHS

One of the main headlines in the news this morning is that without extra funding, the NHS is in dire straits and patients are beginning to suffer as a result of less financial provision than is needed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38019771

One of the things I have trained in, during my career is Solutions Focused Therapy. It’s a fantastic way of helping someone to open their mind to new possibilities once they become stuck in a rut. So, for example, when someone is struggling with depression, there can be a downward spiral of thoughts that prevents the person being able to see much hope for the future. What SFT does, is to awaken the imagination to some other possibilities. The more colour and variety that can be painted the better. So, if you’re imgres feeling low/down/hopeless/sad/apathetic/bored/exhausted, I might invite you to imagine what life might be like if you weren’t feeling that way. You might tell me that you’d feel happy and then I would ask you to tell me what ‘happiness’ might be like for you. I’d ask you to describe in as much detail as possible how you would know that you were happy – what would be different? I’d get you to put as much colour on that as possible. And once I understood how you would know you were happy, I would ask how others around you would know – what your partner/children/friends/pets would notice about you…….suddenly your mind is alive with an alternative reality to where you are currently and although things won’t be suddenly better, your mind has been awakened to another way of being! And that brings a beautiful thing – it brings possible solutions to the problem.

imgres There is no doubting that the problems in the NHS are vast. One of the things I have found is that if you try and enable someone to think about the solutions without allowing them to tel you what the problems are, you won’t get very far. A certain amount of catharsis and expression of the issues is important. So here goes: here is a picture of the problems the NHS faces (and these have already been stated many times over, but let’s just be clear):

imgres The NHS is under-funded. Cuts to other services, like social care have also had a massive impact on the NHS as a system being able to work and targets are being missed as a result. People are living longer and this means more complex health problems and a rise in dementia. There is more obesity and diabetes and this has a huge impact in the cost of healthcare. The way the NHS is funded is ludicrous and puts parts of the system that should be working collaboratively in direct competition with each other. Teams across the NHS are clumsy and clunky with little ability to work smartly due to constraints of historic ways things were set up. Demand and expectation are extremely high and yet there are multiple missed appointments. And I could go on!

BUT we CANNOT stay on the merry-go-round of problems. We cannot continue to simply imgres eat moany pie together and complain about the issues. Throwing mud and finger pointing, blaming everybody else but ourselves will solve nothing. The awful tribalism and over politicization of the NHS is preventing us from finding a way forward. What might health and social care in this country be like if open our mind to new possibilities? What if we stopped focusing on all the problems and dreamed of how things might be in 5, 10, 50, 100 years time? We’ve been doing this in Morecambe Bay and we’re moving from not only dreaming but to doing something different!

images We’re working with our communities to help us all live more healthy lives, thinking about health as a social movement. 97% of all health monies are spent once people are ill. We’re taking prevention seriously! We are breaking down walls between our organisations and sharing our budgets. We’re building relationships between clinicians and managers across many diving lines. We’re collaborating to share our resources and using our budgets in a way that makes sense for our communities. We’re unashamedly talking a new language of love, building trust and establishing infrastructures of positive peace. We’ve worked out where we are being inefficient and sharing our conundrums with our communities (we do actually have to be responsible about what we spend – the NHS is not carte blanche). We’re working out how to work differently and more smartly. We’re sorting out our IT. We’re redesigning care so it makes more sense for our patients. We’re working on our consultation and communication skills. We’re being more proactive in getting positive messages out there. We’re building for the next 100+ years not just the next political cycle. This is better care together! imgres

At this point in time, it is vital that our collaborative efforts are not allowed to fail. We are working hard at so many levels. We are doing all that is being asked of us. We are playing ball. Now we need the government to put their money where their mouth is. Holding the funding as it is will see us and many other areas trying to do the same thing fail in the process and this would be a great tragedy. The solutions, of which there are many, will be in jeopardy. But this is not the time to lose hope. This is the time for us all to make good the dreams we hold for the future.

Solutions Focused Thinking in Population Health

My last blog focused on how we can think about solutions instead of problems in the NHS. Well the same is true in thinking about the health of our whole population. Yes there are some problems! We have growing health concerns with obesity and diabetes. We have huge health inequalities. There are major issues with housing, economic policies that are not working for huge swathes of our population, with more people having to use food banks, struggling with fuel poverty, living in damp houses and unable to make ends meet. Yes, our kids are spending more time on screens and less time in activity. Yes, the sugar lobby, alcohol lobby and advertising giants have far too much power. Supermarkets are designed deliberately so that we buy things that are bad for us. And sometimes, we just make poor choices (if you can call them choices, which for some people, they aren’t always) – we do not all live as healthily as we could – we eat the wrong stuff, work highly stressful jobs, and exercise less than we are recommended to. Mental health issues are on the rise, especially for teenagers, due to crazy targets and league tables, with all the pressures they face. We are less happy and more separated than we ever used to be, despite the rise in social media…..(or maybe because of it……)…..Man, I can paint a negative picture – it’s like storm clouds and darkness everywhere……..

But what if it wasn’t that way? What if we got a bit angry about it, but instead of finding someone to blame and pointing the finger; instead of getting all tribal and throwing stones at others, we chose to use our energies creatively to find solutions, to work together and make positive changes?! Let’s put away our pointing fingers and our ranting tongues and let’s work together for a better future for everyone! Doesn’t that sound good?! It’s what we’re trying here in Morecambe Bay, and I’m hoping it spreads like wild fire so that we can become a place where health abounds and beauty surrounds (that’s the motto of this place!). That doesn’t mean we stop speaking truth to power, but we also let our actions (and maybe our votes) speak louder than ever before.

We’re talking together, taking time to dream about what it would be like if we were the healthiest area in the UK. We’re training up many people to host conversations, so that we break down walls and learn to collaborate for the sake of everyone. We’re not just dreaming about physical health, but mental, social and systemic health as well. We’re encouraging those who want to rise up and take some leadership, to be pioneers in the stuff they are passionate about. Even in my little town, we now have a mental health cafe that is literally saving people’s lives, because a lady called Jane wanted to make a difference. We have a cafe for all the people who have circulation problems because one of our nurses wanted to break people’s isolation and improve their healing rates at the same time. We’ve got a carers cafe, a dementia cafe and will soon have a breathing cafe for those who have severe COPD, sharing ideas and diminishing anxiety. We’ve got exercise classes to help with pain, a community choir, dog poo wardens to help us take more pride when we walk down the street and food banks to help those who can no longer afford to eat.

We have 2000 kids aged 4-11 running a mile a day at school with staggering results for our children here in terms of physical, mental and educational health. We’re hoping over time, this becomes the Morecambe Bay Mile, part of a cultural shift towards being more active. We are working with local chefs and supermarkets to enable people with pre-diabetes or weight struggles to eat more healthily. We’re choosing to lead by example in the NHS to work well and flourish in our work places. We’ve made a commitment to see the 5 ways to wellbeing in every NHS organisation and we’re hoping many other systems and businesses will follow us in this. We’re finding radical ways to help people who are struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, get free and stay free with amazing results. We’re helping people live well with and beyond cancer. We’re changing the way consultations happen in the NHS to enable people to make more informed and better choices about their own health and conditions, so they feel empowered to make changes that work for them rather than beaten up when they go for an appointment! We’re launching the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth challenge, learning from those who are lived experts in poverty to help us work together and care better for those most struggling in our society. We’re having difficult conversations about death to help people be prepared for every eventuality.

All of this has started in the last year! What else might be possible? What other dreams will be awakened? What other partnerships, collaborations and relationships might be formed? Being all tribal and accusatory of others saps our energy and stops us being creative. Mud slinging and blame will achieve little. We have to work from where we are. We have to build bridges and work together. We have to build a future of positive peace and that means binary thinking is over! The future doesn’t have to be full of doom and gloom. It is alive with hope! What resources might we find? What talents might we discover? What might we see develop over the next 12 months/years/decades as we look for solutions together for a better future for everybody? Don’t you feel just a little bit excited?

Morecambe Bay – Finding Health Solutions Together

This is what we mean by Better Care Together!

What Lies Beneath?

Do you sometimes wonder what is really going on? As the furore around the planned 5-day strikes by junior doctors unfolds, with all the clamour and the noise, the positioning, the power plays, the arguments and the counter-arguments, I wonder where is the truth amidst the madness? How have we reached a stage in which the government and an army of medics, surgeons and psychiatrists are at such loggerheads? What lies beneath all of this?

Theresa May, our Prime Minister tell us that “doctors have never had it so good” – I wonder when she last shadowed a Senior Registrar for Acute Medicine on a Friday night in an understaffed hospital? Jeremy Hunt tells us that he is a modern day Aneurin Bevan (I wonder what AB would think of that?!), whilst his shadow counter-part, Diane Abbott retorts that this is a ridiculous suggestion. The PM and the Secretary of State for Health both agree that the junior doctors are playing politics, something the other side refutes, but all agree that this is a disaster and patients lives may well be put at risk. The right wing press tell us it is all about pay and that the doctors are being greedy, whilst the left wing press tell us it is all about an underlying agenda to privatise the NHS. The Junior Doctors admit that some of this is about pay (who would want a significant pay cut for working long and unsociable hours?) but that it is more about resisting a policy to deliver a 24/7, 7/7 NHS, which they believe to be unaffordable and unstaffable due to shortages in funding and recruitment. Senior colleagues appear to be split down the middle in terms of support for the strikes, patient groups are understandably concerned and yet a solution does not appear to be forthcoming.

Shouting, anger, fighting, noise, name-calling, power-plays, hate and hollering. So, who will seek the welfare of the people and the nation? Who will make for peace? Both sides tell us this is what they are doing and this is why they stand their ground. The government apparently want to deliver the same standard of service throughout the 7 day week. The Junior Doctors say they are the ones really standing up for the people by resisting that which is unsafe and unfair.

So, let us learn from the peacemakers to find a way through. In apartheid South Africa, peace was not reached through hate and vitriol. It took deep courage from men and women to expose lies, to speak truth to power, but most importantly to tell their stories. It was not about the one man, Nelson Mandela, but the many together waking up to an alternative future that was fairer for everybody. In the battle for civil rights in the USA, a nation was awakened to the reality of injustice within its own borders. The story of one woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to be humiliated on a bus became a people movement as numerous as the stars, shining together for an altogether different day. In Rwanda, after the appalling genocide, those who lost everything, found a voice to communicate to their very oppressors, those who had raped and murdered their own families, not only their story, but forgiveness for the atrocities caused and found a way through to a new future. If we want peace and a better future for everybody, then we need to face up to our reality, be willing to really listen and then find that together we can embrace a new future.

We have an apartheid of globalisation and free market capitalism across the entire world. Every day, the gap between the rich and the poor is widened. Our entire economic system, founded on the oppression of Empire through expansion (via military violence), the creation of debt (through an errant banking system) and the rule of law (held in place by the state of the exception) is no longer fit for purpose. We see it in the plight of refugees stuck between war and barbed wire fences in a land they cannot call their own. We see it in the disproportionate imprisonment of Black American males in the USA. We see it in the vile island detention centres of Australia. We see it in the slums of New Delhi, the townships of sub-Saharan Africa and the Favelas of South America – in the eyes of children dying from such ridiculous things as diarrhoea and starvation. We encounter it in the streets of Athens and the public squares of Madrid. And yes, we find it in the midst of our NHS and social care system. Our world as we have known it is broken and no matter how much sticky tape or wrapping paper we apply, the centre simply cannot hold. The core is unstable. Everything is shaking. We must have the courage to let go of what we have known and embrace an altogether different future, a future that is fairer for everybody, where things don’t simply trickle down to the poorest, but in which the balances are re-set.

We have become slaves of the ‘free market’, fodder of the beast that requires ever more of us. What lies underneath the row over Junior Doctor pay and the forthcoming strikes is a great gaping hole that scares the hell out of many of us. Oh, we can sling mud until the cows come home, but it’s not going to get us anywhere. Top down, pyramidal, heroic leadership that stays its course and demands it’s own way is simply not going to cut the mustard. We must have some brave and difficult conversations about the detrimental effects of making policy from the safety of ivory towers, and learn to really listen to the stories of those affected. We have so much to learn from the Leeds Poverty Truth Challenge, the Homeless Charter in Manchester, the Community Conversations in Morecambe Bay, the Cities of Refuge initiative, the Civil Rights movements, the Mediation work done in Rwanda…..we don’t have the answers right now. The problems facing the NHS are fare more complex than trying to ensure an undeliverable manifesto promise is outworked. We need humility on all sides, collaboration and partnership.

It goes deeper than people right across the UK needing to manage their own health and wellbeing more effectively. It is more complex than needing to recognise where there is waste and dealing with it. It isn’t just as straight forward as needing to talk about chronic under-funding and under-recruitment. We face an existential crisis, an ontological question about the future of humanity together. Resting back onto familiar ways of operating or antiquated leadership styles will simply not work for us any more. The black hole we face is either a death or the opportunity for re-birth. A squeeze that will force us into something new. We can’t keep dancing around it forever. We must take the plunge, accept that there is no going back and see what new creation we might just co-create with Love on the other side. Don’t be afraid…….there is light at the other end of the tunnel.

Is Our Work Killing Us?

So a huge study from Norway tells us that being inactive at work and sitting at our desks for too long is as dangerous to our health as smoking and is a major cause of early death.

Hour’s activity ‘offsets sedentary day’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36895789

Here is my response:

4) KEEP LEARNING (5 Ways to Wellbeing)

Here is the 4th vlog in a mini-series, exploring the 5 ways to well-being from the New Economics Foundation to help transform the culture of the NHS.

Healthy Conversations

We live in a political climate in which it appears that those in power do not listen to the voices of the ‘multitude’ (e.g. with the current protests around the NHS and education), but press ahead with their own agendas regardless. This is not only true of the current government, but a symptom of the way in which our entire political systems are set up. Here in Morecambe Bay, we need to recover the power of people movements and decide together what kind of future we want. Here is an invitation to come and be part of the emerging conversations about health, well-being and the health system around the Bay.

Changing Health and Wellbeing Through ‘Self-Care’

Better Care Together is the way in which health services are now being redesigned and reorganised around Morecambe Bay, so that we can provide the best care we can for the people who live here in a way that is safe, sustainable and accessible. It is an on-going process and involves the breaking down of barriers between General Practices, the Hospital Trust (UHMBT), Community Nursing and Therapies, Mental Health Services, Social Care, Allied Services – like the Police and Fire Service – and the Voluntary Sector.

Here in Carnforth, we are piloting some work around ‘self-care’ and exploring what it means to be a healthy town. This is now beginning to spread like wild fire around this area, which is exciting to watch! Part of this work is rooted in the fact that currently 1 in every 5 pounds spent in the NHS is due to our lifestyle choices. If we’re going to have a NHS in the future, then we need to try and choose to live more healthily together. We must also recognise that being healthy and well is far more than just physical health. It includes mental health, social heath and systemic (or environmental) health. A few months ago we hosted a number of conversations in Carnforth about what it might be like if Carnforth was the healthiest town in Lancashire. Some really interesting ideas emerged from the community about singing together more regularly, having less dog poo on the streets, creating safe places for the children to play, getting more exercise into our schools, encouraging healthy eating, a mental health café, help for carers and many other brilliant suggestions.

From these conversations, a ‘Self Care Tree’ has grown with four roots and three clear branches that we believe will help us grow together into a healthy and well town. The roots are straight forward – 1) Really learning to engage with our local community instead of assuming that we know what they need and learning to do things with them instead of to them, 2) being part of an Integrated Care Community – see below, 3) Being part of Better Care Together, 4) Understanding Wellbeing – shifting our mindsets from an ‘illness model’ of health to a ‘wellness model’.

The three main branches we have developed in Carnforth are as follows: The first is that we have some ‘culture change’ to undergo, both in our medical and nursing teams and also as a wider community. Over the coming months we will see the emergence of what we are calling an Integrated Care Community – first modelled for this area in Garstang. As part of Better Care Together, we have appointed a fantastic new Care Co-ordinator, Sarah Baines, who was part of our District Nursing team. Sarah will work alongside Dr David Wrigley at Ash Trees Surgery to help co-ordinate care more effectively in the community for people with more complex health problems and provide more stream-lined care, preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and enabling faster and smoother discharges back home from hospital. Secondly, we are learning to take more of a ‘coaching’ approach to how we consult with patients, to encourage more partnership working with people, rather than telling people what to do (which isn’t actually very effective). Staff are training in ‘coaching practice’, ‘motivational interviewing’ and ‘shared decision making’. We are trying to be more proactive with information. If you look on our practice website, www.ashtrees.co.uk, you will find a tab entitled ‘self-care’. Here you will find videos (many more to come and some of which we are re-doing!) that talk about various common conditions you can treat yourself without having to go through the often difficult task of finding an appointment with one of our team. Our local pharmacists are a hugely valuable resource, who can offer excellent health advice and treatments over the counter, saving local people time and inconvenience. Also, not too far away, we hope to have a brilliant new facility called ‘e-consult’, which will allow our patients to manage their own care more efficiently ‘on-line’.

The pressure on General Practice is huge. The government only allocates £136 per person per year to General Practice. this money accounts for all GP consultations, appointments with nurses, blood tests, investigations and referrals and indeed the payment of staff. If you want to know what this compares to, then for £136, you can buy 11 months worth of pet insurance for a rabbit or 3 months worth of coffee every day on your way to work!! No wonder the system is under strain! If we want to have a NHS that is free for everybody and still standing in the years ahead for future generations, then we do need to be careful that we don’t abuse the system and take care of ourselves better and think about whether we really need an appointment before booking one!

The second branch we have seen is the emergence of ‘community leaders’, who have seen a community need and have stood up to do something about it. We know there are already loads of community leaders out there doing great stuff, like sports clubs as just one example. So, we have seen the start of a mental health café, called “Serenity” every Wednesday afternoon at Hunter Street in Carnforth, 2-4pm. A carer’s café has started on the 3^rd Saturday of every month 2-4pm, again at Hunter Street. Carnforth Community Choir meets at 7pm every Friday evening at the Civic Hall – singing is well known to improve our health and wellbeing! We have volunteer dog poo wardens, trying to help our streets be cleaner (it’s amazing what dog poo says about a town), and people cleaning up our parks to give the children in our community safe places to play outdoors. We have trained 22 “health champions” who will be starting with various initiatives soon, and many others have volunteered to help in lots of exciting new ways. All of this serves to break down social isolation and encourage us to take care of ourselves and one another.

The third branch is ‘clinical leadership’. Right now, Morecambe Bay has some of the worst health outcomes in the country. We have terrible heart disease rates and people die here far too young of preventable illnesses. It would be wrong of us, as clinical leaders in the community, to stand by and let these statistics continue as they are. Morecambe Bay deserves better. So, we are working with schools to encourage more exercise in the children and young people in our community. Two local schools (‘Our Lady of Lourdes, Carnforth’ and ‘Arch Bishop Hutton, Warton’, with ‘St John’s C of E, Silverdale’ soon to follow) have started running a mile a day – all children and staff! This is an amazing achievement and there are some wonderful stories emerging already of the great impact this is having on pupils and staff alike. We’re seeing huge improvements in sleep cycles, behaviour, concentration and general health. Under the banner of ‘Let’s Get Moving’ we hope that all the primary schools in the district will soon be participating in other similar initiatives. We have also started a couple of programmes of work with Carnforth High School, in line with needs they have highlighted to us. We are also going to trial a new NHS shopping list and menu to try and encourage us as a community to eat more healthily and avoid some of the unhealthy ‘bargains’ that the advertising giants try and tempt us with, cutting down on meat, alcohol, sugar and too much fat. If we don’t learn to manage our appetites and our spending habits better, we will never overcome the alarming rise in diabetes rates and heart disease. We are responsible together and really can make a change! So, not long from now, people in this area won’t even need to stress about what to cook for the week ahead, because they will be able to turn up to their local supermarket and get some really healthy and tasty ideas, all costed out and easily affordable (with huge thanks to our amazing chefs, Andy Bickle and Lee Till, from our hospital trust, working with us)! By eating more healthily and taking more exercise, we can genuinely change the health and wellbeing in this area for the next 50 years! On a different tack, our district nursing team is also beginning a leg-ulcer café for those who have been housebound. Such cafés have been proven elsewhere to break social isolation and improve healing rates for patients. All of this work is being undergirded by amazing research projects with the University of Lancaster.

As part of our on-going conversation with this community, we are hosting a further evening, alongside our Mayor, Malcolm Watkins. It will be on Wednesday 6^th April, 7pm at Carnforth Civic Hall. There will be other conversations in the next couple of months in Warton (for those living in Warton and Silverdale) and in Bolton-Le-Sands, for those in BLS, Halton and the Kellets. On Saturday 25th June 2016, we will also co-host a huge Health Mela at Carnforth High School. If you live in the area, please do come along to either of these events and talk with us about what is already going on and how we can all work together to make this town and district a truly healthy place.

5 Ways to Wellbeing 2) BE ACTIVE (Changing the culture of the NHS)

In my last vlog, I started looking at how we might use the 5 Ways to Well-being to help build resilience and promote health, particularly for those who work within the NHS (though it can apply to anyone). This second vlog takes a look at the being active and how it can improve health and well-being.

Time to Face the Music

We have yet to really face up to the crisis we are in. We keep on pretending that by making a few alterations here and some adjustments there to how we deliver health and social care, we might be able to save the NHS. But this simply isn’t true. Last weekend saw a crisis conference for GPs nationally as 38% think they will be forced to leave the profession in the next 5 years due to severe under-resourcing and increased stress (that would be a loss of 10000 GPs throughout England, with government plans to recruit only 5000 by 2020). Yet again our Emergency Departments are at breaking point, Junior Doctors are staging further strikes, Public Health Services have been decimated and although new partnerships are being forged with social services and (to some extent) the education system, deep cuts in both those areas mean there is little time or energy left to find new ways of working for the future health of our population. Throw into the mix a need to save £22 billion through “efficiencies” and couple that with the crippling debt caused through programs like PFIs in our acute hospital trusts and we really do have a problem.

Complicating this picture is the stark reality that 1 in every 5 pounds spent in the NHS is as a direct result of our current lifestyle choices and we have believed a lie that the NHS is “free” and therefore we can treat it however we like and live however we want and it will somehow magically sort us out. On top of this we have an ageing population with increasingly complex health needs and an ongoing under funding of the entire system (only 8.9% of GDP).

And we cannot we forget the financial crash of a few years ago which was a major warning sign to us that we are living in a broken system and the god that is
images the Nation State is beginning to crumble all around us. Let me just repeat that difficult statement in another way. The grandfather that is the Nation State is now utterly riddled with a cancer and it is dying. The cancer, like all cancers needs ever increasing growth in order to sustain it’s life and our economy is set up to feed it, but even built on the pyramid of power, control and debt, it can no longer survive. Like any dying man, it is holding on for dear life and as it does so, it puts the squeeze ever tighter on to health, education and other public services, pretending it is still powerful, controlling public services through the slashing of budgets and ever tighter and undeliverable targets whilst not actually dealing with it’s debt issue at all, but telling us all a story that it is. And the mouth of this dying beast, the media that has become utterly complicit with it all, spouts out tale upon tale of how mighty the State remains, “punching above it’s weight” on an International scale (using violence and threat where necessary to do so), but tightening it’s belt to ensure economic sustainability. Am I being dramatic? Listen, when 85 people now have more accumulative wealth than half the world and when the 50 richest global corporations are richer than the 50 richest Nation States (and are therefore powerful enough to tell them what to do), the facades must come down. The Emperor has no clothes on.

And so it is time to face the music. Once we realize that the centre cannot hold, we can permission ourselves to find new ways of being. There really are alternatives to what we have now. there are other ways of being. Life will go on. We can learn to dance to a different tune, we can sing a new song and begin to reimagine a different kind of future. We can learn to live differently. There are some tough conversations to be had. But, as the old systems begin to pass away, what might emerge instead? What brave or holy experiments might we try without letting go of the wisdom we have learned? What might it be like if politics and economics were just part of a collaborative and cooperative world rather than assuming the role of dominant sovereignty over every other sphere of society? What if we can’t have everything we want right now, learning some new and more effective boundaries around the ways we live? What might we prioritise? How might we move towards a more peaceful world? How are we going to live in a way that is sustainable and leaves the environment as a gift rather than a burden for the generations to come? How might we develop an economics of equilibrium (the state of a healthy body) rather than one of continual growth which requires us to feed its ever hungry belly with our own lives? What might we recover in education? How could we shape regional wellness services? How might cities and regions gift their expertise to one another? How might we choose to protect the most vulnerable in society and provide for the most deprived, keeping love at our core over self-preservation, greed, fear or hate?

Truthfully, we can no longer afford to avoid these conversations or hide away in our business. If we want things to remain exactly as they are, then so be it, but what will we leave for our children’s children? In the NHS we spend our lives trying to preserve and prolong life at all costs. But we must learn to face death, because there is life the other side of it. There is life the other side of the Nation State as we have known it. There is still ethical, free, safe, sustainable and accessible healthcare for all the other side of the NHS in its current form. It might become a National Wellbeing Service. Or it might be more regional and cooperative. It will mean some different lifestyle choices and some more effective partnerships. It will mean changing our attitude towards how and where care is provided. But I’m sorry to say that unless we make some radical choices to either pay a lot more tax or not renew trident and spend all of that money on healthcare, there are some deep cuts to be made in the mean time. It is going to be a very painful few years ahead. We must not imbibe ideologies that protect the rich and punish the poor. But we have to be brave enough to let go of the good we have known in order to embrace a future that is better for everybody together.

And that calls for a different kind of kenarchic leadership. We need leaders who will serve and collaborate with communities in open and honest conversations, so that cuts do not happen in an isolated boardroom, but wit Unknown-3 h and among the communities most affected. Leaders must learn to ‘hold the space open’ for the new to emerge. It will mean understanding that we must make choices about which targets we do and don’t decide to meet, prioritising some services over others and taking better care of ourselves individually and in community. But it is not a time to lose hope! There is much goodness to come, much rediscovering to take place. Much creative reimagining to enjoy. Many songs to be sung. So, let’s face the music and dance.

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Reimagining Health

Conversations about Health and Wellbeing

Tag: health

Solutions Focused Thinking for the NHS

Morecambe Bay – Finding Health Solutions Together

What Lies Beneath?

Is Our Work Killing Us?

4) KEEP LEARNING (5 Ways to Wellbeing)

Changing Health and Wellbeing Through ‘Self-Care’

5 Ways to Wellbeing 2) BE ACTIVE (Changing the culture of the NHS)

Time to Face the Music

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