Analysis The squeezed NHS is responding to difficult times by innovating
Our work on rural health and care has led me to reflect that notwithstanding a lot of criticism the NHS is still full of fab people and ideas as this article demonstrates. For more information on my work on the national centre for rural health and care drop me an email. It tells us:
Our report on the state of the health service paints a gloomy picture — but also highlights providers’ resilience and ingenuity.
How often does the chat you didn’t expect to have end up being the best conversation of your day?
It might be with a colleague you don’t often get a chance to talk to, the person from another team you never have quite enough time to sit down with, or someone you happen to bump into. Such unexpected conversations can spark ideas, open up new ways of thinking and help solve problems.
To encourage these conversations, Kaleidoscope Health and Care partnered with the Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network to send brown paper envelopes with £100 to five lucky recipients to spend on whatever they liked – as long as it was in the cause of having an unexpected conversation on the theme of health and care.
We startled a few finance departments, which sent incredulous emails enquiring what the envelope full of money was for. Coffees, lunches and train tickets were all options; we didn’t mind. All we asked was that winners spent the money within a month, had fun doing so and wrote us two 750-word blogs about the conversations.
To be in with a chance of receiving an envelope, we asked applicants to blog about their best unexpected conversation to date. We were blown away by the response. Entries came from as far away as Pakistan. Applicants from a variety of professions entered, including occupational therapists, policymakers, GPs and charity chief executives. The resulting blogs covered a host of topics, ranging from elderly care to US politics.
Did these conversations fulfil our aim? We think they did – or at least laid the foundations. Our project revealed that unexpected conversations can take place wherever you are, between people of all ages.