Tag: love

3 Keys for the Future of Healthcare

This week I traveled to London for an interview. The lovely team that I work with have nominated me for the HSJ Clinical Leader of the Year award. Unbeknownst to me, this meant presenting myself before a panel of experts and leaders in the field of healthcare to talk about the work we have been doing. It was a privilege to get to do this. One of the questions gave me an opportunity to explore with them what I have learnt that has the capacity to bring transformational change….another was about the nature of leadership (which I will blog on next time).

 

So, for what it’s worth, here are the 3 key things  which I consider to be vital to unlock the future of sustainable healthcare, just in case they are helpful!

 

  1. Culture Change 

 

Much has been written in the press (and quite rightly so) over the last few years about some of the toxic culture that is at work in the NHS. Sometimes the toxicity is to do with power plays, competition, hierarchy, bullying, low morale and substandard care. But in other cases it is to do with a lack of compassion and care towards those who work in the system which causes the other negative behaviours or leads on to emotion fatigue and poor delivery of service.

 

When I moved into my role as “lead clinical commissioner of maternity services” (we love long titles in the health service!), three and a half years ago, it was just as Sir Bill Kirkup was publishing his report into the University Hospital of Morecambe Bay. It highlighted the failings we had in our maternity and neonatal services that had lead to some extremely sad and unnecessary losses of life. It targeted the negative culture within our teams and directly challenged some of the behaviours. Morale was understandably at an all time low. But there has been a significant change in culture over the last few years. Cultural shift is absolutely possible but involves a willingness to look stupid at times, to persevere when things feel awkward and remain hopeful when the task seems impossible. I believe the secret lies in rehumanising team meetings, connecting at a relational level, being vulnerable with each other, learning from mistakes, challenging unacceptable practice but creating an atmosphere of grace in which people can reflect, learn, grow, develop, change and discover each other with a deeper understanding and eyes that choose to look with kindness. I refuse to start any of the team meetings I chair without checking how people are doing, giving them space to tell a bit of their story. I want to give space for people to encourage each other, say what they love about each other and what they most appreciate about one another’s work. It’s not rocket science. It’s called connection and compassion! I’ve seen it work here in maternity teams, in our health and wellbeing teams and it really can happen anywhere. Without giving it space and time, nothing will change. But where there is a real sense of togetherness and hope, many more things become possible.

 

2. Community Partnership

 

Part of our problem in healthcare is our level of expertise. We know far too much. We “know” what’s good for people. We “know” what people and communities need. We “know” what will make them better. BUT we have not yet really learned to LISTEN. I have found it to be a very humbling and necessary experience to shut my mouth, quieten my need to fix and really listen to the people and communities I am looking to serve and live amongst. When our team hosts conversations to listen to people here around their dreams for this area in terms of health and wellbeing, they don’t talk about extra appointments at weekends or shorter waiting times. They talk about dog poo, safe playing spaces for kids, singing, looking after elderly neighbours, help with exercise and eating well, safe places for people with mental health problems to get together and be understood and many other things. I have found that listening builds partnerships. It creates trust. It means that with our communities, we can co-commission things, and we can do things together rather than the experts doing things to them.

 

If we are going to see the social movement we need around health and wellbeing in this country, we are going to have to let go of some of our “knowing” and be humble enough to learn. We are going to need to partner with people and not do things to them. We are going to need to focus more on prevention than treatment. We are going to need to work differently. Without the vital engagement and listening with and to our communities, we will never achieve the holy grail of a sustainable health service that remains free for everybody. Together, many things become more possible, and we can learn to live in peace.

 

3.  Collaboration

 

Every organisation is strapped for cash. It doesn’t need to be this way, but it is the reality of our current economic model. Collaboration and the sharing of resources between partners and organisations is the only way forward. I love sitting in team meetings that involve healthcare – in its different guises – primary, secondary and community services, with social care, the police, the fire service, mental health teams, the voluntary sector, the faith sector, the city and county councils. Creating new cultures, letting down barriers, discovering shared vision, pooling ideas and resources – seriously good for the soul and definitely the future we are looking for.

 

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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.

 

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Learning to Celebrate Success

iu-2The NHS really is amazing. Today, I have been at the NHS confederation (confed2016), a conference which helps to set the pulse and rhythm of the health system over the following 12 months. I heard Dame Kelly Holmes speak movingly about her own experiences, help she received from across the NHS and how grateful she is to live in a country where there is such excellent healthcare available to everybody, no matter how rich or poor. As a double Olympic champion, she highly values her personal relationship with her GP, keeping care local and personal. She would not be where she is today had it not been for the superb care she was given when in the depths of depression only a year before she was able to achieve her dream. Had it not been for surgery, physiotherapy and nutritional expertise all from people working within this incredible system, she would never have accomplished what she has done in her career. And not only her, there was a moving tribute from her mother who has also had significant health problems over the last year.

 
In a time of austerity, although in the OECD countries, there have been 260,000 extra cases of missed cancer in the past year, not one of them has occurred in the UK!! The NHS is staffed by brilliant, caring, compassionate people, who are pursuing excellence in the care they provide. The NHS is able to provide some of the best health outcomes in the world and is still rated as the best health organisation in the world by the World Health Organisation, despite having one of the lowest government expenditures in the developed world.

 
We hear so much negativity in the press about failures, pressures, targets and financial strain that it is no wonder there is a low morale at times amongst the staff. But Kelly Holmes tells us that we must learn to celebrate our successes, because in our dark times (and there are many in the field of healthcare), it isiu-1 vital that we keep hope alive. There were many times, when the press was against her, out for a good story, many times when things did not go to plan, but the celebration of her successes along the way kept her hope alive. We are going to have days when we get it wrong. We are going to have increasingly more situations in which we feel squeezed, hard pressed and floundering, but there is so much we are doing every single day that literally transforms the lives of countless individuals. We look people in the eye and tell them our names, that we will be caring for them and that they matter to us. We compassionately communicate the best and worst of news. We use our skills to arrange appointments, clean, bathe, bandage, measure, test, diagnose, operate, teach, manage, cure, deliver new life, care for the dying and so much more. This is nothing short of amazing.

 

1973049_861ba277[1]I am so grateful for the teams I work with at Ash Trees Surgery in Carnforth, Lancashire North CCG and Better Care Together around Morecambe Bay. We are doing brilliant things together every day, as are countless teams across the UK. Part of the culture shift we need to see is for us to lift our heads, celebrate what is excellent and use it as fuel to propel us further forward into the love and good of the future. I thank God for the NHS, it is worth remembering what a treasure we hold in our hands and continue to be grateful for the privilege it is to serve people through it. If we don’t learn to celebrate our successes, we may not find the reslience we need for the path ahead. But with hearts full of gratitude and a sense of achievement, we can continue to go for gold.

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5) GIVE (5 Ways to Wellbeing)

Here is my latest vlog on using the 5 ways to wellbeing to help change the culture of the NHS.

 

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The Junior Doctors And Lady Godiva

A few months ago I wrote a blog suggesting the right approach for the junior doctors was one of subversion and submission. But I think I was wrong. It’s not that I’ve changed my mind on the power of subversion and submission, it’s just that this entire spectacle surrounding the junior doctors, the ‘7 day NHS’, the strikes and the media reporting there of actually affects us all at a profound level.

 

bmalogo14This situation exposes something far deeper than just an argument between Jeremy Hunt and the BMA and is far more important than discovering who has the strongest will power. Infact, the BMA have made a major error in targeting Jeremy Hunt so vindictively, because in the final analysis, this isn’t about Hunt at all. Jeremy Hunt can be replaced in a moment, and is likely to be succeeded by a far more robust Jeremy Hunt nhsBoris Johnson, who will simply pound his fist more visciously. To make Hunt the scape goat narrows this debate to something far too insignificant and actually strengthens the government’s ability to do exactly as they please.

 

Sadly, however, all this proves is how defunct our current system of government has always been. What the government really want is a discussion about how we can improve patient access across the weekend timeframe. However, what they did was to decide this is necessary and went ahead to try to fix what is incredibly complex. There was no discssion, no real engagement, no conversation, no asking of the deep questions. Just because we want something, doesn’t mean we can have it! Just because we think something is a good idea, doesn’t mean everyone else will agree! The entire process of enagement and change management is not understood at all. In the first8790 place, the goverment could instead have said to all the hospital trusts across the country what their hopes and intentions were and then waited to see if this was workable, in what way and how much it would cost. But you cannot simply act like Pharoah and expect the brick makers to make ever more bricks with less and less resource available – otherwise, you face an exodus!

 

What this entire debacle demonstrates is just how far free market capitalism has gone in its use of people as biopower to drive the system. The junior doctors of the NHS are nothing more than fodder to make the machine run. It doesn’t matter at all to the government that their lovely idea of a ‘7 day NHS’ is both unaffordable (due to chronic underinvestment in the health service) and unstaffable (due to a combination of under-training of staff across the board, and free market forces which work against people remaining in the UK). What this exposes in its most blatant form, is the chronic and shocking abuse of power, because of the very structures we have in place and the foundations upon which our society is built – namely violence, debt and control. And so, we see the human being reduced to what Hardt and Negri call ‘naked life’.

 

_86375024_86375023The system, to which we must all bow doesn’t care for the needs of the people who work within it. It will force them to submit. Why should doctors (many of whom work for less than the minimum wage, when on call) be allowed time to rest at weekends? Why can’t everybody have routine care through the weekend, just as from monday to friday (even though most of our top clinicians think we need better emergency care and not routine access)? Surely our economy needs this kind of health service? And actually, whilst we’re on it, isn’t it a waste of time, allowing teachers to have weekends off as well? Don’t we need our children to work harder, or at least be given some sort of babysitting service, so we can get more for our pound of flesh from their parents? If we are to have a 24/7 health service, why not a 24/7 education service? Our shops are already open practically 24/7. In this commercial world – shouldn’t everything else follow suit? No, no and NO!!

 

SolidarityThis is why we need a revolution of solidarity and resistance. We need a people movement who will stand together and be brave enough to say that there is a different way to see the world and a new way to live within it. Our naked life itself, although currently abused, can become for us our greatest power. Our naked life can expose the truth of just how abusive our systems have become. Our naked life, when combined with the indestructable force of kenotic love, becomes the very agent of change that we need.

 

So, what next for the junior doctors? Should they strike next week, including for emergency care? Are they ready for the media (who have lost the art of journalism) to turn against them? Are they ready for the storm that will ensue? Well, lives have already very sadly been lost. How many more can stand under the strain? What if the public turn against their heros?

 

It is time for something deeper to take place. It is time for solidarity. It is time for those of us in senior positions to cover shifts and show our unreserved support. It is time for the public, not just teachers, but across the board, to stand with the juniors. As my friend, Julie Tomlin showed me, we have to learn from the arab spring that one march alone will not do it. March after march after march may be needed. And singing too!! Let songs be heard on the streets! And to Lady-Godiva_DSC_9412really demonstrate the power of naked life……how about naked marches?!! (I grew up in Coventry, and so the story of Lady Godiva is in my blood – nakedness overcame oppression once before!). Or maybe the staff of the NHS should all turn up to work with no clothes on?!! How about people stripping off at least to their underwear to expose both the fragility  and the power of naked life?!

 

There is a different way for humanity. We can free ourselves from the oppressive yolk that seeks to divide and rule us. Perhaps, the Junior Doctors could be more creative and expose the deep structures of oppression that lie beneath the calls for this ‘7 day NHS’? Now is the time for subversion, for exposing just how unjust our systems are. But subversion alone will not suffice. We need solidarity and resistance. So, who will stand and march with the Junior Doctors (naked if need be?!) for an altogether different future?

 

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Christmas

In my last blog post, I talked about the concept of meta-narratives and how they effect our health and wellbeing. For me the Christmas story is the ultimate meta-narrative (the big story with which I align my life). It changes the idea forever that God is a far off hierarchical, imperial, power-hungry megalomaniac. It eradicates the notion that we must go to him where he is in some special sacred space and will only find him if we clean up our act and start behaving in certain ways. No. He comes to us. This story (as JRD Kirk says) is not one of God changing his mind about humanity, but about humanity changing its mind about who God is.

iuHe comes to be with us and changes himself in the process. He becomes utterly human, not some weird, ready-break glowing child, but deeply human and in so doing destroys the stories we have told ourselves about what he is like. He comes to us. He comes right to our very situations, our joys, or triumphs, our brokenness and our shame and says, I AM with you.  And if you run away, I’m there with you. And if you turn away, I’m there with you. And if you hide away, I’m there with you. And if you fail, I’m there with you. And if you don’t believe, I’m there with you in your unbelief.  Because contrary to the caricature of Dawkins, I am love itself. A love that will pour itself out time and again.  A love that is stronger than bitterness, hate and division. A love that is willing to be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented. This is not the story of a God who slaughters his enemies in order to protect himself and those he holds close (a narrative upon which the nation state is built and uses to predicate the violence it does to others – and if you don’t believe me, then you haven’t read enough history). No, this is a story about a love that will lay its own life down for its enemies and enables us to do the same.

As Steve Chalk says, Jesus never came to start a religion. He came to start a political, social, economic and spiritual revolution. God with us – wherever we are. The God who prioritises the poor, the refugee/marginalised/outcast, the sick, the prisoner, the woman, the child, the environment. The powers have never and will never understand Light in Darkness-02or overcome this light. The promise of the light is peace. Peace on earth. If we embrace the way of love, anything is possible. Even in the midst of all the turmoil in our world this Christmas, I find great hope in the idea of God, who is love, with us in it all. I believe that when we embrace this light and this love as our meta-narrative, as our raison d’être, we find healing for ourselves individually and corporately.

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How Well Are You?

I have the joy of leading some health and well-being retreats with a good friend of mine, who is a life coach. The retreats look at the idea of alignment. Human beings are unique and beautiful, incredibly intricate and are made up of layers, like an onion. Some of those layers are individual and some are corporate, because no person is an island. At the core of who you are is your spirit, your unique self. Then there is your soul – that sweet mixture of emotions, thoughts, ideas, hopes, longings, memories, hurts, resentments, desires, etc. All of that is encased in a physical body, with all the complexities that the intertwining systems entail. And these 3 parts of you are constantly interacting and affecting one anoiuther. For example, physical pain caused to you by another person, may cause you to feel emotionally hurt also (soul pain) and crush your spirit. Or indeed, as I see many times in my work, emotional pain leads to a resentment, which causes a bitterness which manifests itself in a physical pain and so too your spirit is negatively affected.

But you do not just float around in a bubble. You exist in a corporate body, in a family, group of friends and community. You live in an environment of some sort, and your surroundings have an incredible amount of ability to affect your health and well-being. This is evidenced in the effect of air pollution on respiratory disease or the effect of isolation or indeed bullying on mental health. We are all aware of the sights, sounds, smells and stressors in our physical geographies. Added to this corporate body is our corporate soul. And in the corporate soul we find corporate memories, ideas and beliefs, fears and dreams, things we have been taught, world views that shape us and all of this feeds into our meta-narratives, the stories with which we align our lives, that give us some sort of meaning. Surrounding all of this? The corporate spirit. Love. God is Love, not fear, or hatred or violence or bigotry or judgment, but Love. We find time and again in our own lives and in the lives of those who come on retreat the misalignment/disalignment/nonalignment that happens so easily, not necessarily through anyone’s fault, but because life is so complex.

 

It’s not as simple as tweaking one thing and then everything falls into place. Many of us still have to live with chronic and enduring illness of various sorts, be that mental or physical and achieving images“perfect health” may not be possible. But alignment is possible and it is this that gives us a sense of well-being. So, how well are you? Do you know how much you are influenced by the corporate body and soul? What are your meta-narratives? How aligned are you? There are things we cannot change, but we can chose how we respond to them and the choices we make within them. I want to unpack this a bit more in subsequent posts, but this might just kick off some musings.

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Christmas Number 1?!

A few months ago, I was moved by the Syrian Refugee crisis to write a song. I sat at my piano and played some chords and imagined what it must feel like to have to flee the place you call home and to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers. I let myself feel the pain that many Syrian people must feel as they see the walls being built around the borders of Europe, a continent which only a few decades ago was tearing down the Berlin Wall but is now erecting barbed wire fences.

So, this song emerged. I recorded a little youtube clip. A friend of mine, Claire Askew (who plays drums on the track) heard it, played it to some
pUnknownroducers (Sugarhouse uk) who generously offered to record the track for free. The amazing charity that is World Vision then heard it and it was agreed that we would release this single as a way of raising money (100% of all the money from singles sold will go to World Vision) for Syrian Refugees this Christmas.

I don’t know if there is a better narrative for a song in this season. The song of a refugee, fleeing home due to powers beyond their control, only to find there is no room for them…..

On one level, I would love the NHS to get to the number 1 spot for Christmas; I definitely don’t want x-factor to get the spot! But, what if this Christmas, we decided to spread the word as far and wide as possible and help World Vision raise a huge amount of money to help those stranded, cold and homeless. The single only costs 99p – less than most of the bottled drinks we will consume this Christmas. I have no power at all to make this happen, but it would be amazing if the Syrian Refugees could be this year’s Christmas Number 1!

So here it is. “Will You Love Me?”

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/will-you-love-me-feat.-claire/id1063998040?i=1063998267

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Love – It’s a Two Way Street

There is a lie that has been told, to clinicians in particular, that it is wrong to get too close to patients. One is told to keep a healthyimgres separation, perhaps to make the tragedy we often deal with somewhat more bearable. We have shaped medical ethics around the four core principles of beneficence (do good), non-maleficence (don’t do harm), autonomy (respect a person’s own wishes) and justice (treat everyone the same). But as the black eyed peas would ask us (!), imagewhere is the love? Where is the love and compassion that makes us human and deeply connects us to the ‘other’ and even the ‘other, other’ (someone so different to us that we find it almost impossible to connect to them)?

 

I was involved in a conversation recently with Phil Cass, a psychologist and CEO of a healthcare company, from Ohio, about this very subject. He told me some very stark facts. In the USA, the highest suicide rate is now amongst physicians and 67% of medics suffer with depression. Studies found that although these people were motivated by love, they found it very hard to receive love back from those they were giving love to.

 

imgresWe have made the clinician-patient relationship a one way system, and we shut down the reciprocity of the love we give in the name of ethics and professionalism. But this is to our great detriment. Patients love and trust their doctors, nurses and therapists and this love could be a huge source of resilience, courage, support and hope. We must let down our guard and receive back the gift that we give in order toimgres become more healed ourselves. It will allow us to enjoy our work more, reconnect with the core motivation inside us and encourage us, because when we give and receive love it spurs us on to keep going when the system feel like it is against us.

 

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Why Better Care Together?

imgresThere is an ancient proverb that says: without vision, people perish. I believe we in danger of watching the NHS perish in front of our eyes, not because we don’t know what to do or even how to do it. I believe we have been so focused on the what and how of healthcare, that we may have forgotten why we do what we do.

 

The NHS is an organism, made up of many living cells, called human beings, who have a vast range of complementary skills and interpersonal connectivity. These cells work imagetogether in tissues, joined to each other in complex systems to function as a body, a body which gives itself for the health and well-being of the nation. This body is not a robot, who’s performance can be processed like a machine for a predetermined output, but it has been treated as such, just another example of biopower, where people are used, rather than cherished. So now we have more of a Tin Man with no heart, than a living, breathing body.

 

But at the heart of the NHS is what we find in the heart of every human being, if we dig deep enough. The heart of the NHS, the very core of its being, it’s true raison d’être, it’s driving force is in fact, love. And the people, the cells who work in this loving imageorganism, also carry love in their hearts for other people. It is stamped through the DNA. It is the motivation. It is the reason people get out of bed in the morning, or work through their weekends and nights. It is why the wards are clean and the beds are made, why the bloods are taken, the investigations are done, the research is carried out, the people are washed and fed. It is why the hours of study and audit are diligently pursued, it is why the training is so robust, it is why the skills are acquired, it is why the time is given. It is why the NHS was founded in the first place, because all people, no matter how rich or poor, saintly or depraved, are worthy of love.

 

And yet we find that the human beings who join together to form this body are often struggling with severe stress, anxiety, depression and low morale. How can this be so? Is it possible that the structures we have put in place to try and support this body have instead become a hindrance? When my wife was born  she imageshad congenital talipes aka clubbed feet, due to a positional issue in her mum’s womb. When she was born, her feet were turned in and she had to wear painful calipers for 2 years until she was operated on by a very skillful orthopaedic surgeon. Now, in her mid thirties, she can run and dance because the calipers were taken off in childhood. As the NHS grew and developed, structures were put in place in its formative years to help the right sort of growth and strength to happen, but many of these are no longer useful and in fact are now a hindrance. We have become slaves to serving structures and ways of doing things that work against us as we try and stay true to our core motivation of love.

 

Part of what we are exploring through ‘Better Care Together’ hereiu-4 in Morecambe Bay is how to dismantle and reform these structures in order to allow this amazing body to function more naturally and freely. This organism is constrained within bizarre silos that make the what and the how of healthcare provision so complex that the why of what we are doing so easily gets forgotten amidst the complexities of service delivery. So, first and foremost, we must recover/rediscover/reconnect with/strengthen our vision, founded upon love and compassion for other people. Galvanized by this vision to provide continually improving, high quality, compassionate and loving healthcare to all in our community, we must tell the structures again and again, that we do not serve them, but they are only there to help us in our task. Right now, they need remodeling, and this is happening. We need less care in hospitals and more in the community, we need better integrated IT, different payment methods, new ways of working in General Practice (in larger more resilient practices, federations or co-operatives) and across the old boundaries, better pathways for patients and communities to be able to care for themselves and each other more effectively. But unless we have love, all these things are like a great symphony orchestra, playing a great new score but void of any connectivity with the audience. The form, as our chief commissioning officer, Hilary Fordham, rightly tells us, must follow the function, but I believe both the form and the function are motivated and under-girded by love and compassion.

 

So, why Better Care Together? Because the world has changed and the health needs of the population have changed and we simply can’t afford for things to remain as they are. But the deeper reason is so that we can provide continually improving, high quality, compassionate and loving healthcare to ALL in our community. This involves a mindset change. No more can we think of our own little patch. No more can we think ‘I’m just a GP of 1500 patients’, or ‘I’m just a nurse on the cardiology unit’ or I’m just a physio working in one particular area’ or ‘my practice only looks after 17,500 people’ (though of course this kind of personal care is still absolutely vital), but the paradigm shift in our thinking is towards being a member of a healthcare system that cares for the 350,000 people around the Bay. It’s about allow our hearts and our vision to grow bigger whilst giving brilliant care to individuals where we are located. That means learning to work differently, always motivated by the love and compassion we have for people.

 

 

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