“Mind the Gap”

I had the privilege to hear Dame Ruth Carnall talk and reflect on her career in the NHS. She talked about some of the challenges that she had faced, and also the future challenges that NHS leaders face.

The new structure of the NHS provides us with lots of opportunities, but also challenges. I have myself struggled to understand how the new system will work and I have noticed that since the changes there have been times when I have become focused on the day to day workload and delivering my personal objectives.

If we are to meet the needs of our population in terms of health and social care provision within the much talked about financial challenges, the one thing that most of us would agree is that we need to integrate more. My reflections when working with teams is that there can often be mistrust of other teams within the system and assumptions made about the other team’s motives.

My belief is that everyone in the health and social care sector has similar values and beliefs about improving health and wellbeing of our population.  It is why we all do what we do. We come to work to make a difference. The opportunity for us now is to look up, to work across the gaps in structures and to enter each interaction with the understanding that we all trust each other.

Our academy is working with leaders across health, social care, the voluntary sector and with citizen groups to look at ways that we can empower our communities. The aim is to reduce dependency on health and social care services by listening and designing services with patients and citizens.

This new style of leadership programme “ Leading Empowered and Health Communities “ is built on the value of co-production- it feels like a good place to start to close the gap.

Maggie Woods, Associate GP Dean HETV

April 2014