Читать книгу International Practice Development in Health and Social Care - Группа авторов - Страница 11

The pandemic has triggered global tragedy, pain, fear, anxiety and darkness. Yet, at the darkest times there is an opportunity for the light of learning to stream in. I believe that the three key areas of learning from this crisis are compassionate leadership, teamworking and reflection.

Compassion is the core value of our healthcare system and it is the most potent healthcare intervention. The challenge is for us to create cultures in our organisations where staff are both encouraged and enabled to deliver high‐quality, compassionate care. Leaders must embody compassion in the way they lead by attending to those they lead (‘listening with fascination’); seeking a shared understanding via dialogue of the challenges those they lead face; being emotionally intelligent and empathising; and finally helping those they lead to deliver high‐quality, compassionate, patient‐centred care. This theme is powerfully developed in the leadership chapters in this volume.

Effective teamwork is fundamental to healthcare, practice development and the flourishing of staff. It is teams that innovate through collaboration, cooperation and co‐design. Our teamworking skills are probably more important than our technical skills for practice development. Team members must have the courage to eliminate the blockages caused by hierarchy and professional boundaries. Team members must genuinely value diversity, be it professional, opinion or demographic, so that we use the knowledge, skills, abilities and experience of all for practice development. Effective teamworking is core to practice development, to high‐quality care, to innovation and to the mental health of staff. This volume effectively reinforces those messages through both evidence and experience.

The third theme that is exemplified in every one of the contributions in this volume is the importance of our taking time to be still, to reflect and to learn. Leaders, teams and organisations are more productive, effective and innovative when they take time out to pause and reflect. Such times of stillness are associated with wellbeing, but also with productivity and innovation. Busy health and care teams which take time out on a regular basis, to stop, to debrief, to review, are on average between 35 and 40 per cent more productive than teams that simply keep reacting to chronic excessive workload.

These three themes are fundamental to practice development, as they were to helping us during the dark times of this pandemic. Above all, for genuine practice development, we must build belonging and trust, and develop cultures of compassion. We must come to see ourselves, the people we work with, those we care for and the people we lead as fundamentally more caring, cooperative and compassionate if we are to create a brighter future. This volume helps us to do precisely that.

Michael West is Senior Visiting Fellow at The King’s Fund and Professor of Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University.