What does this mean for clinicians in Lancashire and South Cumbria?

In late December, I sat in a Lancashire and South Cumbria Decision Making Workshop, with leaders from across the system, and thought “what does this actually mean for clinicians in Lancashire and South Cumbria?”

The analogy that sums this up to me was said at the beginning - "we don't want to march people up a hill only for them to have to come back down the same side again".

Clinicians of all grades, professions and specialities are just too busy delivering the best possible care that they can at the moment to spend time in meetings about service improvements that will never happen because we have not got necessary agreements, governance or just high level relationships in place first.

Many of us have already made the improvements that we can to our own areas and now feel that we are banging our heads against a wall as we need ‘everyone else’ to change something that they do so that we can deliver even better care.

That's also the reason why I do this work; to try and unblock barriers to frontline staff making effective changes to the care that they deliver and enable them to lead their own services as they know their patient’s or user’s needs best. They also are likely to have a relationship with those patients to enable a discussion about what they need to have great health care and social care.

There is a huge amount of learning that I am doing, acronyms, job titles, organisations and policies but one thing is clear - there is a massive breadth of knowledge and expertise available to us here in Lancashire and South Cumbria and if we get our agreements, governance and high level relationships right then the army of clinicians and care staff who are so passionate about change will be marching right up and over that proverbial hill of improved patient care!

Andy Curran, Medical Director for Lancashire and South Cumbria

Consultant Emergency Medicine at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Network Clinical Director Lancashire and South Cumbria Major Trauma Network