Hello, my name is Lucy Cole, and I am proud to be Director of the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT).
My dad used to say to me, ‘Lucy, with you it’s not whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, but who drank my bloody drink?!’. It’s fair to say I would never be singled out as the optimist in the room. A realist? Yes. A pragmatist? Absolutely. A cynic? Quite possibly. But an optimist? I highly doubt it.
Off the back of a two-and-a-half-year pandemic which is still set to test us all this winter, a new Prime Minister, changing Secretaries of State, a cost-of-living crisis, and a challenging public attitude to the NHS, it is easy to slip into the glass half-empty or stolen drink mode. This can lead to our starting point for collaboration sometimes being a deficit model – what is missing, what don’t we have, what isn’t working? Person-centred planning is driven around a strengths-based model and yet we can often fail to do this for ourselves as a system. Improvement comes as much from an appreciation of what works well, of the brilliant practice, as it does from a focus on the problems.
It is great to see our senior leaders recognising this, and we need to build on it. We recently brought together colleagues from across our WYAAT executive teams to reflect on the last six years of collaboration and to start setting the priorities for the future. There was a commitment from everyone to collaborate and to a culture of improvement but also a recognition that we needed to focus more on building from our strengths. We acknowledged the need to be more proactive in collaborating across some of the brilliant services we have across WYAAT, rather than solely reacting to service fragility.
Recently, gathering information for the WYAAT Annual Report brought home the successes and the strengths that we draw from collaboration, and the power that has to motivate us all to go further. The long-term transformation can be spurred on by short-term wins, whilst the relationships built through long-term transformation can make resolution in the here and now a much easier task.
My list might not be quite as quirky as Ian Drury and the Blockheads’ but here are some of my reasons to be cheerful:
- After more than three years of groundwork, we’re preparing for our first deployment of a shared Laboratory Information Management System and ICE diagnostic hub which will allow clinicians to access results across primary and secondary care across the footprint, reducing the need for unnecessary repeat tests for patients, and supporting clinical decision-making.
- We’re about to submit our Outline Business Case (OBC) to NHS England as a pathfinder site to implement a major new pharmacy aseptics service, which will be a major step in ensuring our ability to meet a growing patient need for chemotherapy, and release nursing time to care in our hospitals by preparing products in an aseptic environment, rather than on the wards.
- There are over 220 home working stations in the homes of our radiologists and reporting radiographers, giving greater flexibility to these individuals. We’re nearing implementation of our shared reporting solution which will allow radiology departments all six WYAAT member trusts to share patient images to be reported by colleagues from other hospitals. This will be both from an on-hospital site and from home.
- Thanks to a herculean effort from all WYAAT trusts individually and collectively, the number of patients waiting over two years for an appointment or procedure has been reduced to only a small number of patients choosing to wait or requiring a complex procedure, and we’re ahead of our plan to ensure no patients are waiting more than 18 months by April 2023.
Above all, my greatest reason for optimism is that I am fortunate to work with some incredible and inspiring people who are a genuine pleasure to work alongside and from who I learn every single day.
We’ve all got reasons to be cheerful, even when things are really tough. It helps us all to see the wood from the trees. I’d love to hear some of yours!
Have a great weekend.
Lucy
over 32 years ago. Throughout my career I have worked with the people facing the greatest disadvantage and inequality in our society, including drug and alcohol users, homeless people and people experiencing domestic abuse. About 15 years ago I moved from clinical practice into strategic health commissioning roles in order to influence population level change particularly for those facing the greatest inequalities.
Since the start of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System (WY&H LMS) there has been a close working with those working in and developing neonatal care. There is now a national mandate to strengthen those relationships by becoming ‘Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems’ (LMNS), the national team has provided guiding principles to support the work. The WY&H LMNS Board approved the notion of becoming the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity and Neonatal System (and will now be known as this) the board also acknowledged the work that is required and supported this is written into the LMNS plan.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals have this week gone live with sharing their core hospital data into the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR). This is a huge milestone as they are the first hospital in West Yorkshire to be sharing information! The YHCR is a secure computer system that safely brings together important information about patients who have used services provided by their GP, at a local hospital, community healthcare, social services, or mental health teams. In the long-term having access to this information will improve the provision of care delivered to patients closing the data gap across West Yorkshire.