A Day in the Life of an Interim Director of Care & Quality
The day started with a plan to get through a whole load of emails and prepare for meetings in the afternoon focused on quality improvements.
At 8:50am, that changed.
An incident meant everything else had to be put on hold. It became the priority for the day bringing together the senior clinical team to talk things through and formulate an action plan.
It was so great to work with a team who know their sense of direction. The doctors were absolutely on it, taking responsibility for their areas, and the senior nurses took direction and got on with what needed doing, fitting it into already busy roles. With that in hand, advice needed to be sought externally as well, so took up a little time before moving on the first planned job of the day: progressing job adverts for new roles within the organisation to further develop our patient services.
Then the day moved into a meeting with an IT firm, looking at developing systems that make life easier for clinical staff, reducing technical administrative tasks and enabling staff to spend more time with patients. This is a work in progress and will take time to come to fruition, but it’s a really important piece of work.
The afternoon started with a patient experience meeting, where we were looking at developing surveys for patients to gain feedback from them and their relatives. Alongside this, we were working to make sure whatever we develop fits patients’ needs and helps us as a clinical team learn from their feedback but also consider how we can use it to enhance future fundraising bids. When we apply for grants, it will help us show the impact we have in supporting patients and families.
Right after that, we moved into a quality assurance meeting with the Head of Clinical Education and Quality. We were talking about how to support the team and make sure we’re looking after them appropriately, and that patients are getting the support they need. An action plan evolved from that.
Then at the end of the day, we had a review meeting and debrief from the morning’s incident with the senior clinical team. It really is an absolute pleasure to be working with these guys because everybody was on it, knew what their actions were and knew what the next steps were, with a plan to regroup next week to take things further.
Then there were a few “must-dos” — two messages that had been marked as urgent. One was a staff issue, someone needing pastoral support and time to explain their home situation and seek support. Following on from that, there was a call with a relative who had suffered a bereavement and wanted to talk through their family situation, and made some recommendations about how we can work better with families to support and communicate who we are, what ellenor does, and what hospice care is all about.
So, an absolutely full-on day.
Now it’s home time. It’s still marmalade season, so there’s marmalade to make. And I’ll speak to my son about doing some painting at his new house this weekend.
And that’s a day in my life. Full, challenging and always about people.
