Being Better, Together

Alison Jones is the Quality Improvement manager at the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit in Birmingham Children's Hospital. Alison has been a core member of the LFE movement since she was the project lead in the PRAISe project in 2017. Since then, she has adopted strengths-based methods into her current role. She is probably one of the leading experts in the use of Appreciative Inquiry in QI in healthcare, so there is a lot of wisdom imparted here as she reflects on her extensive experience of using this approach. We cover a range of topics, including Alison's practical definitions of AI and LFEQI, her thoughts on how and why this approach works, how to approach cynics, the fact that "soft skills" tend to underlie a great deal of excellent practice, reframing in various forms, safety-II and much more.

Dr Neil Spenceley is a paediatric intensivist in Glasgow, and a long-time friend of LFE.  We talk with Neil about a number of related topics including safety-II, understanding complexity, challenges in safety investigations, reductionism, the problem with aiming for “zero”, WAD vs WAI and a LOT more.  Neil is really knowledgeable in this area, and he explains his thoughts in an easy, listenable way.  As we often do in the conversations, we ran out of time, so stay tuned for a repeat conversation some time in the future. 

This is our conversation with Dr Rana Awdish. Rana is the author of "In Shock", a critically acclaimed, bestselling memoir based on her own critical illness. She is a sought-after public speaker, delivering inspirational keynote addresses to groups ranging from professional medical societoes, to members of congress, to organisations combarring homelessness. A pulmonary and critical care physician, she serves as the current director of the pulmonary hypertension programme at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.

Paul Devlin is a member of NHSE Emergency Care Improvement Support team, and the co-founder of the NHS Kindness Network.  Paul spoke at our LFE5 conference last November on kindness, and we wanted to hear more from him.  In this conversation Paul talks about the “science” and “evidence” relating to the application of positive psychology to workplace culture and wellbeing.  He uses terms like “hyperdyadic spread” and “spontaneous trait transference”, which might sound like grand, academic concepts, but actually they point to underlying ideas which are highly intuitive and easy to practice.  Here is a link to the recording of Paul’s talk at LFE5 to open access (previously only available to delegates of the conference).  I highly recommend watching this presentation if you enjoyed Paul’s conversation.

https://youtu.be/kkmjTcv8OM4

Mr Mo Belal is a consultant urological surgeon at University Hospitals, Birmngham (UHB). In 2021, Mo had a cycling accident and sustained a spinal cord injury. He tells the story of the accident and what he has learned from it - both professionally and personally. Mo's positivity and optimism shines through in this conversation. He shares insights from his experiences as a patient which can help us all as healthcare professionals, as well as more general thoughts about how to approach the inevitable challenges of life.

Dr Chris Turner is a consultant in Emergency Department at University Hospital, Coventry and co-founder of Civility Saves Lives. Chris has been a friend of Learning from Excellence for years, and he is the co-host of this podcast and our LfE conferences.  This episode of the podcast is a recorded conversation with Chris, talking to us from the recent Civility Saves Lives community event in Birmingham.  In this conversation we discuss the activities of the CSL community; how to avoid judgement when witnessing poor behaviour in the workplace; an overview of normative ethics and how this can help us understand behaviours; and a practical approach to provide feedback to a peer about poor conduct.  Chris cites the work of Jerry Hickson and the "coffee conversation", and reminds us of the "Baverstock manoeuvre", credited to Dr Anna Baverstock - another friend of LFE!

Doctor Dan Jones is a cognitive psychologist at Reading University.  Dan has been involved in the LFE community for many years.  He has studied LFE in healthcare, and has implemented LFE in an academic setting in his university.  In this conversation (recorded live at our monthly LFE community call) we discuss Dan's recent paper on staff perceptions of LFE in the hospital setting, along with a host of other related topics including the negativity bias, the impact of public vs private positive feedback, the differences between written and verbal feedback, the pros and cons of standardisation of LFE, the problems with defining excellence, Dan's experiences of implementing LFE in a university setting, and other topics.

Dr Anna Baverstock is a consultant in community child health, and also a coach, mediator and schwarz round facilitator.  In this conversation, we discuss a range of topics relating to Anna’s work, including definitions of wellbeing; approaches to challenging conversations; mediation in healthcare; differentiating kindness from “niceness”; feedback and radical candour; how to encourage diversity in teams; and much more.

Anna's suggested reading list related to the topics in this conversation:

This episode is a recording of our conversation with Janet Leighton, the "Director of Happiness" at Timpson's. In this conversation, Janet and Adrian discuss the origin of this role and what it involves, as well as many of the initiatives Timpsons have put in place to support their staff. They also discuss the Happy Index: Timpson's only Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Although Timpson's is a private company, we think there is much we can learn and apply from their approach to working in the NHS. It is clear that Timspons's promote staff autonomy, recognise and appreciate success, and offer support to staff during challenging times. It sounds like a good place to work.