Download LeAD Clinical Leadership Support Materials: Video - e-LfH

LeAD Clinical Leadership Support Materials: Video Transcript
Dr David Foster
Deputy Chief Nursing Officer
Leadership in any setting is really important and when I do hospital visits (which
I do to keep in contact with what’s happening in the front line and to make sure
that I understand how teams are developing and what changes they are making)
I’ve seen some really fantastic leaders, they are sometimes in surprising places.
They are not necessarily positioned in the hierarchy of a team but there are
some really important people who have the idea and then stimulate others and a
whole team comes with them. I particularly remember going to an orthopaedic
ward where the team had managed to reduce the length of stay for patients
having hip surgery phenomenally. The reduced pain and reduced blood loss, the
whole experience for the patient was really so much better. It was really
intriguing listening to the whole team who started with the nurses, but it was the
ward hostess, as they were called in this organisation, who had some of the
most good ideas because she had got a sense of where the organisation needed
to be slicker. She welcomed the patients, she settled them in, she understood a
bit about their circumstances and she knew that they would be going home very
quickly. It was her intelligence gathering in that sort of situation that made a
real difference to this patient pathway. Not only was that impressive but it
wasn’t until I had heard all of this that I could work out who the surgeon was.
So there was no hierarchy about it. The surgeon, the anaesthetist had their
parts to play but in telling the story I was really struck that the patient was so
much at the centre.
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