Last year’s winners receive their prizes from Dr Andy Coley and Caroline Henderson

Each year at CLN Congress we present awards to recognise the work of those clinicians who have led successful projects with tangible clinical improvements, and which have made a real difference to patients’ lives.

This year we will again be paying tribute to our late colleague Dr Steve Henderson, Medical Director of the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), who was one of the founder members of the CLN and a committed and passionate clinical leader both in the North West and nationally. The CLN-AQuA Henderson Quality Award is presented in honour of Steve and acknowledges achievement in innovative projects and supports the growth of service improvement across the NHS.

The successful first prize winner will receive a £5,000 bursary to develop and spread their innovation, as well as additional support from David Fillingham, AQuA Chief Executive. Two runners up will also receive bursary prizes.

In particular, we are looking for clinicians who can demonstrate elements of quality in their projects and how these have led to greater productivity within their service area. Applications for the awards are online – please click to apply.

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 30th March and winners will be notified by Friday 20th April.

The awards will be presented at CLN Congress on April 25, at the Queens Hotel in Leeds.

If you have not yet secured your place for the CLN Congress please book your place now as numbers are limited.

Click to watch video interviews with last year’s winners – Cathryn James, Kiran Patel and Frances Cole – online.

We look forward to receiving your applications and seeing you at the CLN Congress.

Yvonne Coghill OBE is currently the National Programme Lead for the NHS Breaking Through. The programme is designed to empower and enable Black and Minority Ethnic colleagues to reach the most senior positions in the NHS. Yvonne has championed the CLN REAL Network as it has evolved, enabling and supporting the first cohorts of Eminent and Aspiring Leaders to commence their leadership development activities. Here Yvonne shares her personal blog ……

My team consists of seven people: three regional coordinators, three administrators and me. I am incredibly proud of the team and everything we have achieved together. They are amazing people and each of them brings something unique, something special to the team. Breaking Through would not be Breaking Through without them. We have been a team for just under a year but I believe we are a tight and cohesive group. Teams that are high energy are so important. Without a driven and resilient team that’s moving in the same direction it would take so much longer to hit objectives or to have any impact at all. The new NHS needs to have highly productive teams that can deliver successfully on a very difficult agenda.

So what makes a great team? I believe it’s several things (and this is just my view).

• Everyone understanding the direction of travel and sharing the vision – but more than that, actually wanting to go in that direction and believing it’s the right way to go.
• Having difference in the team. Every member of my team brings something uniquely different to the party and it is that diversity that makes a difference.
• The ability to work hard and go over and beyond the call of duty. There isn’t a single member of the team who won’t go the extra mile.
• Genuinely caring for each other and the team itself.
• Flexibility, tolerance, openness and honesty.
• And of course good, high quality, confident leadership.

I’m sure you’ll agree that what I’ve described is the crème de la crème of teams. Let’s be honest most people are not lucky enough to work in teams like that, at least not all the time. I have worked in and led many teams in the NHS and can attest to the fact that lots of energy goes into trying to make teams function as a unit; sometimes the poor manager/leader has to deal with dissent, disagreements, dissatisfaction and disobedience or all of these at the same time. It is hard work moulding and motivating a team to be successful, sometimes the skills it takes to do this go unrecognised or unappreciated.

So you can imagine how grateful and thankful I am that I have such a high quality productive team. The interesting thing with a team that is so cohesive is what happens when a new member joins. If the new member assimilates and becomes part of the team quickly, understanding the culture, the do’s and the don’ts, what’s acceptable and what’s not, then all is well with the world and productivity remains high. However, if the new member does not fit and does not want to integrate, or worse than that the team does not want to welcome the new member in, then the dynamic can be very different.

On reflection, this is where the quality of a good leader needs to come to the fore. It is incumbent on them to work out how to help the newcomer become a fully functioning and integral part of the team. In my experience this is easier said than done but done it must be. The sum of the parts is greater and stronger than the individual units, therefore enabling the team to continue delivering whilst ‘storming and norming’ is the leader’s priority.

In the coming months, many of us will be joining new teams or have new members joining our teams. Let’s remember what it’s like to be a new member of a team and help to support the individual to settle, in the hope that if we join a new team, colleagues in that team will make the effort to support us to fit in and become the best we can be.

To follow Yvonne’s blog, visit http://nhsbreakingthrough.wordpress.com/

Booking is now open for this year’s CLN Congress, which will be held on April 25 at the Queens Hotel in Leeds. This is the third Congress held by the CLN, and this year’s event is being held in partnership with NHS North of England.

The purpose of this year’s Congress, titled “Leadership for Provision”, is to enable some of the country’s most influential clinical improvement champions to participate and engage in an active learning and networking experience. We recognise the need for clinicians in commissioning to facilitate the engagement of their colleagues in provision and to play a lead role in the newly developing NHS, and we hope to make use of the CLN philosophy to help this occur.

Entry is free for CLN members. If you are a clinician and have not yet joined the CLN, please visit http://members.cln.nhs.uk to register. Membership of the CLN is free.

The event will run from 9am until 4.30pm. Click to book your place.

The conference will be fully interactive, with sessions and seminars designed to enable you to participate in an active learning and networking experience. The day will be grouped into four themes:

• Information and intelligence
• Leadership skills for provision
• Structures and the changing NHS
• Patient revolution

Workshop bookings will open later this month and further speaker details will be confirmed shortly.

We are looking forward to our first CLN REAL webinar  to be held on February 10 at midday. This is a one hour introduction to the NHS including its history, structure and the current policy landscape, and will include a brief film from the creation of the NHS in 1948 and an overview of its structure and funding mechanisms.

We will then go on to briefly describe the current changes proposed by the Coalition government including the changing provider landscape (including AWP) and new regulatory framework, the new commissioning environment and the emerging roles of the National Commissioning Board and GP commissioners. Hopefully there will be opportunity for a brief Q&A session at the end of the webinar and we can also answer any queries you may have after the event.

All CLN REAL Aspiring Leaders members will receive a link for this session. Please allow 10 minutes before the start for the upload to the system. If you haven’t used webinar software from your laptop/PC before it would be useful to have a trial run before the event to avoid any problems logging in on the day.

If you have any comments or questions at this point please contact info@cln.uk.net

The launch event for the CLN REAL Eminent Leaders was held on January 24 at the Friends Meeting House on Euston Road in London. The successful applicants for this cohort have expressed an interest in developing strong leadership skills, increasing their influence amongst peers and developing personal capabilities to address the current NHS challenges.

Michael Wilshaw, NHS CLN Director welcomed the participants and gave an overview of the aims of the Eminent Leader programme. Prof Rajan Madhok, CLN REAL chair then provided more background to the CLN REAL – from inception to present day.

Dr Rosy Daniel, Regenerative Health Consultant described the Health Creation programme which will promote self-care and proactive health and wellbeing. All participants will have a personal role in their health outcomes and will have access to a one to one support session on a monthly basis. The launch of this programme is very timely as the one of the recent comments in the NHS Future Forum findings was that “… if we expect healthcare professionals to improve the health and wellbeing of the people they meet in the course of their work, the NHS must first ‘put its own house in order’.” The CLN REAL is one of the first networks within the NHS to encourage healthcare staff to become role models, by monitoring their own state of mind and well-being through the Health Creation coaching programme and we will be evaluating our results.

Michael Finnigan, i2i Chief Executive led the activities for the day with a masterclass on “Leading Teams and Understanding Your Natural Leadership Style’. Group discussions were encouraged frequently through the day where Eminent Leaders considered values that they see displayed in their own organisations and reflections on variations in leadership styles. They also focussed on culture shift, clear vision and values and behaviours. At the next session attendees will use their AVA (Psychometric) reports to further develop their learning and understanding of their own personal style.

Also in attendance was Dr Raj Kumar, NHS CLN Chairman who invited colleagues to be full members of the wider NHS Clinical Leaders Network as well as being part of the CLN REAL network. Please check with info@cln.uk.net if you need access to the online directory. Further information is available at www.cln.nhs.uk

Immediate feedback from the first event has been extremely positive with participants ready and eager to take advantage of the programmes available from i2i, Health Creation, Mission Excellence and also the access to a mentor from their profession.

We look forward to meeting the Eminent Leaders again 22^nd and 23^rd February for the next i2i Masterclasses in London,

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of the CLN REAL Eminent Leaders programme, aimed at developing those black and minority ethnic clinicians who are in established senior clinical/management positions and who have the desire and capability to develop into regional/national scale roles.

The first event of the programme will take place on January 24, 2012 at the Friends Meeting House in London. i2i, Health Creation and Mission Excellence will all be involved in delivery of the programme, which runs until September, and you can find out more at http://clnreal.wordpress.com/eminent-leaders/

In order to take full advantage of the programme that we have to offer, could all Eminent Leader particpants now complete the online survey and the psychometric test at www.completeava.com

For more information about the programme, please contact Pam Bainbridge at info@cln.uk.net

Kiran Patel, Consultant Cardiologist and Clinical QIPP Lead at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, won a £3,000 CLN-AQuA award this year for his telemedicine project to introduce remote monitoring of pacemakers for patients with long-term heart conditions. Here, he gives us an update on the project and how it is progressing..

I won the CLN award for my project to introduce remote monitoring (RM) of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs),which is a process whereby patients substitute outpatient review for safe, remote monitoring of their devices at home. Remote monitoring means that we can pre-set alerts, which ensures changes in either the device or the patient’s condition are notified to the specialist team much earlier than usual. As a result, RM is not only more efficient and convenient for patients, but is able to deliver safer and better quality patient care.In the climate of QIPP, I believe this is a key example of how innovation can improve quality and save cost simultaneously.

RM often avoids the need for patients to attend conventional cardiology clinics and also enables more frequent surveillance of their pacemaker, enabling us to detect any problems at an early stage and avoid emergency hospital admissions. For example, as a result of the RM we can now detect and treat atrial fibrillation much earlier, helping to reduce the risk of stroke. For clinicians and the NHS, we can now dedicate more time to patients who need quality face-to-face attention and there has also been significant cost saving, by freeing up workforce time. We have recently held four patient groups to gain feedback on the project, and so far we have had really positive comments about how pleased they are to be able to be monitored from home, and to be able to communicate with the cardiac team as and when a problem arises.
The cultural change to remote monitoring also promotes a more widespread move to managing patients NOT devices alone. At our Trust, I have led implementation of remote monitoring for patients with heart failure, a long term condition which is a significant consumer of resource, and for patients with implantable defibrillators, since December 2010. Now all pacemaker patients are recruited to remote monitoring and at over 90%, the uptake by patients demonstrates its popularity.

The change in culture and behaviour for staff has also been significant. To remove face to face follow up and articulate the new telemedicine scheme required significant clinical engagement. For patients, we used support groups, expert patients and industry partners to demonstrate the quality improvement potential of RM. Clinical engagement is key to implementation but equally, managers are key to operationalising a shift from conventional OPA activity to RM.

I have now started to use the bursary to enable this innovation to be spread across the West Midlands, by supporting the practical implementation of my strategy and developing monitoring systems. I am currently leading on the use of RM across the SHA region and all providers in the area are hoping to have implemented it by April 2012.

In terms of the national picture, there are only a handful of providers outside of the West Midlands implementing remote monitoring, despite prioritisation by the DH Innovation and technology Adoption Programme, and so I have also recently been asked to draft a framework for NICE making remote monitoring a suitable strategy for QIPP nationally in terms of innovation and outpatient reduction.

If you would like to contact me to find out more, please contact kiran.patel4@nhs.net

Professor Rajan Madhok, Chair of the CLN REAL Network, has written an article for the CLN about the challenges of sharing innovation across the NHS. Click to read the blog online.

We send our best wishes to all the CLN REAL members over the Christmas and New Year holidays, and we look forward to working with you closely in 2012.

Professor Surinder Sharma talks to the CLN REAL Aspiring Leaders group

Nearly 40 aspiring black and minority ethnic clinicians attended the first meeting of the CLN Race Equality Action Leadership (REAL) Aspiring Leaders group on December 7, held at the Friends Meeting House in London.

The group discussed how they wanted to shape the programme, which has been set up by the NHS Clinical Leaders Network to support their leadership development over the next nine months. Key themes to emerge from the day included the need for organisational, personal  leadership and skills development. In particular, there was discussion around the group’s desire for help with:

• Relationship building across departments, organisations and professionals
• Skills-building in networking and influencing senior management
• Time management and work-life balance
• Career planning
• Conflict management
• Support to improve pathways and deliver patient care

The day was hosted by the Chair of the group, Professor Rajan Madhok. It featured keynote presentations from Professor Aidan Halligan, Director of Education at UCLH, who spoke about the importance of storytelling and values in good clinical leadership, and Surinder Sharma, National Director of National Director of Equality and Human Rights , who gave the latest update on Department of Health policy.

About the REAL Initiative

The CLN REAL Initiative was originally set up in 2010 to support the leadership development of black and minority ethnic (BME) clinicians, and is chaired by Professor Rajan Madhok, former Medical Director of NHS Manchester. It supports the leadership development of black and minority ethnic (BME) clinicians through three programmes of work – Aspiring Leaders, Eminent Leaders and Senior Champions, and is supported by the Leadership for Equality Steering group and the National Leadership Council. The network is for clinicians from all professions and across all geographical boundaries.

The Chair, Professor Rajan Madhok, former Medical Director at NHS Manchester is a clinician with a longstanding interest in BME issues.  A medical graduate from Delhi, India, he has been in the West since 1980. He initially trained as an orthopaedic surgeon in the NHS and then switched to public health. Over the years he has held increasingly senior leadership positions in the NHS and until recently also worked in the IT sector.

His work has covered the breadth from his early research in health services experiences of Asian patients to developing BME leadership. His commissioned book: ‘Against the Odds, BME clinicians and Manchester 1948-2009 was published in 2012. You can read more at http://www.migranthealthworkers.org.uk/research.html

If you are interested in joining the CLN REAL Initiative, would like a list of members and stakeholders or have any enquiries regarding the programme please email info@cln.uk.net

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