What a Difference a Day Makes...

Following a 'difficult' workshop in Oxfordshire on 16th May (see post dated 18th May), the following week couldn't have been more different. We delivered 4 'Trust Me I'm a Patient' training workshops in 3 counties: Hampshire, Buckinghamshire and the dreaded Oxfordshire. Living in Warwickshire, we found ourselves up and down the A34 like a yoyo.

Monday 19th May was spent in Basingstoke, Hampshire with a delightful and appreciative group of participants. I'd like to have adopted a couple of them and taken them with me to other workshops as they threw themselves so enthusiastically and passionately into their roles.

Trevor chats with 3 of the 17 participants

Tuesday 20th May was spent at the Culham Science Centre in Abingdon in, dare I say it? I'll whisper it, Oxfordshire. Getting in was like trying to get in, or perhaps out of prison. Met by security guards, we noted that they lacked any charm or personality.
The workshop was great apart from a bit of negativity from one frontline NHS staff member. She said that she hadn't learnt anything and wished she hadn't left her important work with patients to come to our workshop. I asked her why she had attended, to which she replied, "It was a tick box exercise for the PCT (Primary Care Trust) to say that I've been on a course." Mm... any comments about that?

Ready to go home at the end of a long day. It took several hours finding our way out....

.... and even longer to get in

Wednesday 21st May was spent preparing workshops for the next 2 days ...

Thursday 22nd May saw us in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. The workshop took place in the local Anglican church and the people were responsive and utterly delightful.

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

Friday 23rd May was spent in Eastleigh, Hampshire. It was a small workshop and it all went smoothly. We ended the week by presenting DAFTA awards to participants.

Eastleigh, Hampshire

Imagine this.....

Imagine that you go to the theatre one evening to see a play in two acts.

Imagine that the play opens with a narrator to set the scene, during which some people come into the auditorium, late and noisily.

Imagine that the first narration is over and the first scene appears to go quite well, creating laughter and a round of applause at the end of the scene.

Imagine that the second scene is interrupted by two people from the audience. The first one says that the first scene was completely false and unrealistic. The second person stands up to say that he is offended by something in the script.

Imagine that the scene continues, somewhat slugglishly because the success of the second scene is dependent on a response from the audience.

Imagine that one of the actors remains composed and professional, though inside he feels embarrassed. The other actor becomes hyper-active in an attempt to win back the audience, but does manage a degree of control.

Imagine that a couple more people in the audience interrupt by stating that the play was different from what they were expecting and had they known what the play was about, they wouldn't have come. They leave the auditorium.

Imagine that the curtains close before the first act is finished.

Imagine that the second act proceeds but it is difficult to follow, without having seen the first act in its entirety.

OK that's enough imagination for one day! This highlights one of our role-playing training workshops for the NHS, last Friday. Trevor and I have facilitated many of these events and apart from a little bit of negative feedback a few months ago from one, the response has been warm and positive! We wouldn't have been contracted to do a series of 25 workshops with one health authority if they'd been that awful!

I was the one who went all hyper and humiliated myself. I feel so sorry that we failed, and that the majority of the audience were short-changed.

Sigh, we have 4 more similar workshops this week. Lamb and slaughter spring to mind. I'd better pop a jar of mint sauce in my handbag.

Here's me, after the workshop... attempting a smile!

Cross Country Runs

Thursday 10th Jan

Trevor and I delivered a ‘Trust Me I’m A Patient’ Workshop at the Widnes Viking Rugby League Football Club in Widnes, Cheshire. This was for a group of 46 participants from a Primary Care Trust in Merseyside. Click here for more information about our workshops.

Having been constipated for nearly 3 days, today was the day my sluggish system chose to start working. Typical. Mind, you, nerves played a big part. This particular workshop involves me acting out 3 (scripted) characters. I play a disgruntled receptionist, an 85-year-old patient and an arrogant doctor. Trevor and I had decided at the last minute that I should also play the Chief Executive of a Primary Care Trust. This was unrehearsed, unscripted, un-everything and subconsciously my bowels reacted in …..well, I wouldn’t say nerves exactly ……. just abject terror. After about the 5th visit to the loo our workshop commenced, my bowels switched themselves off and my usual three characters sprang into action (but not at the same time – I’m not that good). As it happened, one of the participants bravely took on the Chief Executive role and I was tempted, just for a second, to hug her. Trevor and I hug each other, our friends and most people we know in fact but we don’t hug NHS management people – they belong to a different species. The homo-slanganus variety has a peculiar language; it speaks in jargon and oh, so many acronyms. So, the CE of the PCT at the NHS was denied a hug.

Workshop successfully delivered, we made our way home and on the M6 back towards Coventry, my bowels switched themselves back on…….oh brilliant.


Friday 11th Jan

Trevor travelled up to Leeds by train today and left me alone in the house. I dislike my own company and felt 'lost' for most of the morning. I couldn’t concentrate on work and ran 6K on the treadmill. Afterwards I was mortified to discover that I had gained 2 lbs, despite the exercise and yesterday’s frequent offloads.

Trevor is a prolific writer on management, business and leadership. It came to our attention that he was featured in the New York Times on the 8th Jan. He’s really excited, bless him.


Saturday 12th Jan

I woke up feeling as though I was in Heaven, as I do every morning. Trevor and I go to sleep and wake up with our arms and legs wrapped round each other with my face buried into his hairy chest. It’s a wonder that I haven’t died of suffocation, but if I do ‘slip away’ during the night, what a beautiful way to go.

Today, we spent a few hours with a friend whose life has been turned upside down recently and he was in an emotional state. We pray for him every day that some normality will return to his life and he will be happy again. Later, Trevor and I went to a local Chinese takeaway and ordered a meal to share with my parents. The flamboyant Chinese lady behind the counter was unusual to say the least! After every sentence, she laughed loudly for no apparent reason and I found myself willing her to speak in longer sentences. After my little problem on Thursday, we decided to nickname her.

My mom is in much discomfort with backache, so it cheered her up when Trevor and I arrived with a selection of food from Won Long Poo.


Monday 14th Jan

This time 17 years ago I was feeling a little tender in the ‘lower regions’ having given birth to Lucy, my second child. The happy memories have come flooding back. As births go, it was comparatively short (but not painless, oh no!) and I managed a natural delivery without any form of pain relief. There wasn’t time. My little bundle of joy is now grown up, tall and skinny with legs up to her armpits and utterly lovely.


Tuesday 15th Jan

Trevor and I shall be attending BBC’s Question Time this Thursday 17th January, when it will be televised from Coventry. Everyone in the audience has to be armed with 2 questions to ask the panel, one each that we have already emailed to the BBC and one that will be based on this Thursday’s news. There will be 150 people in the audience so the odds are that the cameras won't turn on me. I’d better take an extra toilet roll just to be on the safe side.

To Lower Oneself.......

Trevor and I delivered another “Trust Me I’m A Patient” role-playing workshop to 120 people on Monday at the East Midlands Hilton Hotel for the NHS ‘Improvement Foundation’. Attendees were a mixture of NHS managers, frontline staff and patients.

The objective of this workshop is to help people look at change from a different perspective; seeing change through others’ eyes. In brief, the scenario is that there are proposals for 3 GP surgeries to close and be replaced by one large, modern health centre on the edge of town. The press have published the story before patients or surgery staff have been advised of the changes. The handling of the project has been a shambles, caused through a lack of communication. It is a realistic scenario.

To date we have facilitated 18 of these workshops to more than 1000 delegates. At the end of the workshop we ask participants to complete a short evaluation form; ticking boxes to give their opinion of the workshop - very poor, poor, average, good or very good. We ask them the best part of the workshop and also what could be improved. In our previous 17 workshops, I think there has only been one ‘poor’ a handful of ‘average’ and an abundance of ‘good’ or ‘very good’ ticks.

Monday told a different story. Out of the 48 evaluation forms returned we received 5 ‘very poor’, 6 ‘poor’, 11 ‘average’, 12 ‘good’ and 14 ‘very good’. 72 participants did not fill in their forms.

Trevor and I invite criticism but we are disappointed by Monday’s response. From the ‘very poor’ forms, participants wrote that our workshop was set at too low a level, ie. for staff low down in the NHS tree, not for staff of senior level. The workshop was ‘juvenile’ and we weren’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. One person wrote that if she wanted to become an actor, she would have enrolled at RADA instead of finding employment at the NHS!

As a little girl, I never ever dreamed of being an NHS role-player and facilitator, just as probably most managers in the NHS never dreamed of being chief executives or patient and public involvement managers. Sometimes our jobs occur by accident rather than by choice but we either muddle on blindly or we develop a conscience and strive to be the best we can possibly be.

Trevor and I are committed Christians and have speculated the idea of advancing our bible study at a theological college. When we moved to a new village in July, we decided to join an Alpha course at our local church. Alpha is designed as an introduction to the Christian faith and I was uncertain that this was the right course for us. After all, there is no hesitation about our commitment and we attended an Alpha course a couple of years ago. I couldn’t see the point in taking a step backwards. Trevor was keen to do it again so we joined and I am so pleased for his better judgement. We are ‘back to basics’ and learning things we missed last time in addition to sharing our faith with others. This is merely an analogy and I am not writing this as a bible basher or trying to convert anyone [honestly]. The point I’m making is that these NHS managers might like to think about going ‘back to basics’. The workshop is an opportunity to engage with other staff of ‘lower levels’ (to use this person’s language). Sometimes, workshops and conferences are not just about what we can learn but about what we can give. Perhaps these NHS high-level people who feel that our workshop is set at too low a level for them, would consider following Sir Richard Branson’s example. He frequently returns to the shop floor – and I suspect that he learns and gives every time.

Our workshop was never designed to find solutions to NHS improvement. The answers are already within the minds of the staff and patients.