Natasha Swinscoe, Interim Managing Director, explores some of the issues raised by the recent Nuffield Trust paper ‘Falling Short: why the NHS is still struggling to make the most of new innovations’.
Many of the NHS staff I’ve worked with seem to be cut from the same piece of cloth. If you show them a problem needing a solution, they’ll either find the solution or work out how to. These people are proactive problem solvers, so if the thing they need isn’t on the market, they may well make one ‘Heath Robinson’ style.
At a recent conference I listened to clinicians from one of our local trusts outline some of the systems and solutions they’d been putting into practice to fix their problems. These ranged from different training methods to a sponge being used in an innovative way to stem internal bleeding. I was struck by their creativity and innovation. The question in my head was how we harness this creativity, recognise and celebrate it, and then spread the solutions to others in different hospitals to use. Professional networks often provide an adoption route, but even these don’t offer comprehensive coverage.
Shortly afterwards I read the Nuffield Trust briefing paper ‘Falling Short: why the NHS is still struggling to make the most of new innovations’. I knew it resonated with my experience when I kept underlining sentences in red, with a number of exclamation marks! Here are a few…
- Innovation in the NHS relies on pushing products first and hoping people take them up!
- Identifying problems and looking for solutions isn’t built into everyone’s day job!
- Innovation needs Senior Exec level oversight and support!
- Too often short term savings drive the need for innovation rather than transforming pathways!
These are all important points. We know clinical and non-clinical staff will always find solutions. What we can’t rely on is the culture within the NHS supporting innovation. If the culture doesn’t foster or support innovation then new solutions or ways of working will falter, stay hidden from others, or at worst fail to solve the problem. A ‘let’s try’ environment is crucial.
In my role as a manager of Acute Services, I lost count of the number of times I had clinicians turn up at my door or stop me in the corridor with an ‘idea’ they wanted to try – frequently for little or no cost. We often pursued these ideas with a positive ‘Ok, let’s give it a go’. Out of this came some fascinating service and pathway changes benefiting patients and staff, and saving time or money that we could then re-invest. There were many win-win results, but they relied on a team culture that encouraged and shared ideas, kicked them around, and then had a go, without being sure if they’d be successful or not.
From April we’ll be working with Office for Life Sciences to support this innovation pathway ‘end to end process’. We will be looking for ways to strengthen and support trusts and commissioners to adopt tried and tested ‘oven ready’ innovations. We will be looking for ways to capture ideas from front line NHS staff to match with business sector innovators.
The answers are out there. The people working in the NHS every day, the ones facing the situations that need solving, embody a wealth of creativity. We should be asking them what they need to make their working lives easier, what they need to make services slicker, safer and cheaper. They know what’s needed. If we support them and pair them with innovators and creators in the commercial and business sector they will create the changes we need. Let’s all start by looking for our innovators, listening to them, and supporting them to give it a go.
Posted on January 22, 2018 by Natasha Swinscoe, Interim Managing Director, West of England AHSN
