Innovation in Healthcare: A Smith+Nephew Perspective

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How to survive and thrive at work

 It's Wednesday evening and I've joined a webinar to listen to Rachel Morris and Caroline Walker to explore work-life balance,. 

Caroline Walker is a Psychiatrist and specialising in healthcare wellbeing via the Joyful Doctor website.

Rachel Morris is a GP and hosts the You are not a frog podcast and provides resilience training for health care professionals

The Medical Protection Society is hosting a series of webinars to help address health and wellbeing in health care.

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life" 

Mistakes happen more often when we are rushing and the webinar explores how can we lower the pressure.

Time poverty can affect the quality of life and common experience suggests mistakes happen more often when under time pressure. 

How to create space and time in life to do the things that really count:

How to be list!

What do you want your life to be about?

What sort of relationship do you want to build.

What sort of person do you want to be?

How does time poverty affect us?

Wellbeing? Kindness? Generosity? Enjoyment?

If you are in a hurry you are less likely to show kindness and to help. Evidence was presented how a sense of hurry limits our inclination to help someone. We can struggle to be kind to ourselves as well. 

Common Time Traps:

"I can do everything"

"Underestimating the time things take"

"Overscheduling"

"Thinking time will expand"

"Money is more important than time"

"Not living in the present moment"

"I don't have time to....."

How can you challenge these issues and how can you create time and space?

Big rocks first for a meaningful life. 

If you start with the big rocks first and then little pebbles and then sand you can achieve more.

What are the most important issues - personal care and relationships:

Identify Time Thieves and address them:

Distraction management = pain management --- create friction to avoid / make it harder to be distracted.

Infinity pools - --- delete / create boundaries.

DIY attitude ---- delegate and outsource more 

Certain apps are designed to keep us sucked in.

We are trained to handle anything but can lead us into doing everything ourselves. 

Eliminate and Prioritise

MIT - Most Important Task

Beware the urgency trap - we are doing the quick and urgent stuff but we need to do the important stuff to prevent stuff from becoming urgent.

Say no

Don't finish things

Quick and dirty

Only take on things you really want to do. 

"I need to check my diary and get back to you."

We are often trying to squeeze too much in.

You can use Post-It Notes to identify what we are doing and review to identify if we are trying to do too much.

Some people are trying to manage 14 or 15 sessions of work in one week. 

How many sessions do you want to do and include admin times as well?

What else do you want to do?

Introduce Buffer Zones and a mental buffer. 

Under schedule each hour of the day to allow time for thinking and reflecting.

I enjoyed the presentation and it introduced some new ideas to consider. I have found that using my diary to schedule tasks and allow time for them is one of the most helpful approaches. This helps me to avoid over scheduling. I agree that hurrying is not effective and risks more mistakes. I will explore some of the tools and have joined the mailing lists for further information. 

Allotment Plans

So it's now almost half way through February 2018 and I thought I'd just jot down a few thoughts about the allotment this year. I'd like to concentrate on green manures this year to help revitalise the soil and allow for the limited amount of compost I have got on the plot at the moment. This will mean I won't be growing as many crops as normal but will hopefully result in a more productive plot in the future.

Celeriac
Tomatoes
Chillis
Cucumber
Herbs - Basil, Thyme, Rosemary, Sage, Mint, Parsley
Celery
French Beans
Broad Beans
Purple Broccoli
Courgette - Roy and Anna have planted seeds and will share.
Cabbage
Spinach
Garlic
Jerusalem Artichoke
Globe Artichoke

Redcurrant, Rasperry, Blackcurrant, Bramble

Pears, Apples, Damson, Greengage, Plum.

I've pruned the hedge and fruit trees. Ordered some horse manure and chicken pellet manure.

Finishing a project...

Pleased to have completed a major renovation project at home in modernising the bathroom. Everything including the pipework, ceiling, floor and tiles had to be replaced as well as the bath, sink and toilet. I was surprised by quite how much work was involved and it has certainly kept me occupied. I've managed to compete some other jobs as well and once everything is straightened out it will be a big relief to have the house back in some kind of order.

Why not just go down the new adelphi club?

Came across a post by a colleague which has inspired me to start on my blog again. Having only written one post in a couple of years I'm hoping things might improve! I can't believe how many projects I seem to have going despite what I thought was a conscious effort to narrow down my horizons.

List of projects in no particular order and I suspect I'm only just scratching the surface of my home space here....

1: New bathroom project - ongoing major renovation.
2: Fitting wood burning stove in shed on allotment - materials sourced
3: Creating wooden compost bins from reclaimed pallets on allotment.
4: Clearing waste ground on allotment to enable a new raised bed to be established.
5: Fitting a cap flap to the from door to enable the cat to come and go instead of driving everyone round the bend constantly trying to get in or out every 5 minutes.
6: Fitting louvered windows to the greenhouse to help improve ventilation.
7: Fit the airlock on the cider we just pressed over the weekend.
8: Printing some live music photos for consideration for a display.
9: Reclaiming some space on my hard drive to continue working on my photo projects.
10: Preparing my appraisal for work.
11: Repairing / replacing the right hand brake, gears and slow puncture on my bike.
12: Getting slow puncture on car fixed.
13: starting walking again in the evenings.
14: Getting out in the mornings to capture some of the wonderful scenes at sunrise during autumn.
15: Making a wormery for composting
16: Door Knobs on the doors
17: Light bulbs for garage and outside
18 Pony for Ruth
19: Plinths on the kitchen cupboards
20: Fixing the back gate so you can close it from the outside.
21: Building a pizza oven
22: Building a step outside.
23; Fix lights outside.
24: Repair door bell;
25: Lights in the kitchen.
26 New filter for fridge
27: Start blogging again......

On the other hand why not forget all this and just go down the The New Adelphi Club

CNSoMe Reflections

Having embarked on the Canvas Networks Social Media CNSoMe course I wanted to explore using a blog to help in my learning process! Using a blog is one of the ways you can help to reflect on what you have learned and remember it better. It won't be the first time I have embarked on a blog and there is a sad and largely empty lot of abandoned efforts somewhere in the ether. This time it seems right as my blogging has an ultimate purpose to help me learn, remember and hopefully understand better. I am struck by the wonderful opportunities that social networks bring to our lives. In my own field of family medicine and undergraduate medical education I can already see the benefits and my enthusiasm for learning and teaching has been invigorated. Where this is going to lead I am not really sure but leaving myself some notes along the way seems a pretty good place to start.