Sarah Wright and Anjana Kaur
Welsh Government/HEIW
The rising pressures on NHS Staff and service delivery can make the principles of prudent healthcare and compassionate leadership feel aspirational and almost too difficult to achieve. However the need for sustainable healthcare practices is more important than ever before.
This project is starting a necessary conversation regarding how prudent healthcare practices can be applied by a tired workforce to an over stretched NHS service. The principles of co-production with patients, making the most effective use of resources and doing less when possible needs to resonate with NHS Staff. Therefore compassionate leadership practices must be along side this discussion.
This work encourages us to “read the room” and look at how we can deliver evidence-based practices consistently whilst addressing the needs of our workforce. By achieving this we may sustain the health service and finite NHS resources.
The project involves the development of a series of communications exploring how healthcare professionals (HCPs) can be supported to introduce prudent healthcare principles into their daily clinical practice alongside compassionate leadership. Senior Leaders within Welsh Government and Health Education Improvement Wales will join front line NHS Clinical Staff, Patients, Members of the Public and NHS Managers to discuss the principles of prudent healthcare in the real world.
The topics will include “How to create less demand?”, “Patient autonomy during systems recovery following COVID-19 Pandemic” and “Clinical decision making when systems are under strain”. The focus of each discussion will be a specific and real life scenario i.e a Patient waiting in hospital for cardiac investigation over the weekend when no out of hours service is available.
This conversation is a big picture approach and essentially advocates a behavioural and cognitive change to how we approach everyday NHS problems constructively, providing a platform for further work.
