In the early part of the pandemic, early summer 2020, we ran a series of #VirtualWhoseShoes sessions, sharing innovative best  practice during the pandemic and exploring the particular challenges faced by different groups of people.  The work was influential and led to a lot of interesting speaker opportunities, as well as helping  people ( including us!) realise that we could keep our core business going and enabling us to run adapt our workshops among them online.
You can read the report here: https://fabnhsstuff.net/fab-stuff/the-whose-shoes-phenomenon-a-catalyst-for-change-in-health-and-social-care

Today I have collected some of the most popular ones – using poems to tell the story of the pandemic. I hope you enjoy listening – and possibly even more I can imagine as listening to this episode in a few years time. I wonder what memories it will evoke?

Key lemon lightbulbs include …    🍋💡🍋  

• Let’s hang onto the best things we discovered during the pandemic
• No hierarchy just people.
• Teamwork and valuing everybody
• The power of community
• Cutting through the bureaucracy to make things happen quickly for the benefit of patients
• Valuing key workers; realising how we are all connected and interdependent
• Being grateful to people who  keep us safe and for the risks they are taking
• Awareness of deep inequalities and wanting a fairer society
• Nature and other simple pleasures
• (Missing) getting together in person and having hugs

How much are you still appreciating and determined to hang onto these, for ourselves and for others, as the world opens up?

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Today, I invite you to meet Dr Matt Hill – I hope you enjoy the warmth and wisdom he brings to this podcast series as much as I do!

I heard Matt speaking at the online NNAP conference, the National Neonatal Audit Programme, which showcased best practice in neonatal care.

Matt is the Clinical Adviser on Safety Culture for NHS England and was one of the keynote speakers.

He was talking about creating the conditions for a perinatal team to flourish – but it became clear to me that what he said would help ANY healthcare team to flourish.

There were so many practical examples of what makes a good team, and how is leads to well-being and a positive safety culture.

There was an emphasis on collaboration, inclusion, empathy and relationships.

There is huge synergy with our ‘Whose Shoes’ work, particularly around our core principle that you have to create the conditions for meaningful conversations, coproduction and teamwork!

Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋

• Health care in its broadest sense is about people - people caring for each other.
• Be curious about people; nurture and invest in them; share personal stories
• Look for those moments of human interaction
• Create space to get to know people as human beings and build trust among colleagues
• Learn about and recognise the value and unique contribution each individual brings
• Kindness and compassion helps good team dynamics, and improves culture and safety
• Create a welcoming environment for new staff members
• Introduce yourself as a person, rather than solely by job title, to foster a more inclusive and connected environment
• Flattening the hierarchy in workplace conversations makes it easier for junior members to share their thoughts and feelings with more senior colleagues
• Recognise and value diverse perspectives in healthcare, rather than prioritising a narrow view
• Understand patient experiences and preferences - ask what matters to each person to provide effective care
• Small gestures matter, such as using people’s preferred names, in building trust and psychological safety
• People may have different interpretations of the same words or actions
• Establishing positive relationships improves care outcomes, especially for the most vulnerable people
• Focus on doing things differently, rather than just measuring what we do!

If you have enjoyed this episode, you'll also love:
Episode 32. Dr. Bob Klaber - kindness matters!

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If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

So today I am fulfilling a pledge. If you look at the Purple Rainbow website, you can make pledges #SomethingForSeth, as part of the legacy for Seth Goodburn, who sadly died of pancreatic cancer in 2014.

My pledge was to invite his wife Lesley to share the story on the podcast, and I am delighted to do so today!

Lesley has done extraordinary work to raise awareness of this cruel disease and help so many other families going through the same experience.

This is my first ever one-to-one conversation with Lesley – I hope you enjoy it!

This is a story of love and humanity, fundraising, connections, supporting improvement through narrative, including storytelling, and also making a play and a film. As you can hear already, So much synergy with my Whose Shoes work.

Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋

• Hopes and dreams are shattered by a terminal diagnosis. Human beings are involved.
• The prognosis for pancreatic cancer has hardly improved in 50 years
• Pancreatic cancer is hard to diagnose - don’t ignore symptoms, get checked out
• A breakthrough is near – but it costs money to make progress!
• Let’s close the gap between the theory and the practice. If you ask patients and family carers to say what matters to them ... make sure you are listening
• In patient experience, often the effect is cumulative,. You need to listen from the start.
• People affected by adverse outcomes are PHENOMENAL in reshaping their lives and goals to help others
• The Hope Network (Heads of Patient Experience) are a fantastic network for quality improvement
• We all need hope.
• Adversity helps us discover what we are capable of – fundraising, advocacy, taking part in research and more
• Homeward Bound – creative methods such as making a play or a film can be powerful
• People can feel guilty surviving when others don’t
• Peer support - using your lived experience to help others
• Let’s connect ...Yvonne Newbold ...Sarah Land - also helping others through their lived experience!
• Storytelling! And a shoutout to Miles Sibley, founder of the Patient Experience Library
• And Cath Crock and the Hush Foundation!
• And Nicola Enoch, founder of Positive about Down Syndrome
• Listen to what is important to someone. It might be as simple as a cup of tea – but would you want it cold and milky when you have always liked it hot and strong?!

Links and resources
Purple Rainbow website - listen to podcasts exploring pancreatic cancer
Make a pledge: #Something4Seth
Yvonne Newbold - Founder of Newbold Hope
Sarah Land - Founder of Peeps HIE charity
Miles Sibley, Founder of Patient Experience Library

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If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

'Whose Shoes' looks at issues from different perspectives. But what weight, do those perspectives have? Lived experience, learned experience?
Is your version of what happened a ‘medical report’, regarded as evidence, but my version just anecdotal, a ‘patient story’?
What is regarded as admissible or inadmissible evidence?
Miles Sibley is editor of Patient Experience Library and fab weekly newsletters and a quarterly magazine, finding practical ways to bring patient experience to the fore and share best practice
Huge synergy with my Whose Shoes work - ensuring patient experience is taken seriously and people know how to act on it
Huge potential! I ‘m hoping this will be one of the most influential ‘Wild Card’ podcasts
Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋:

• There a 100% evidence base for medical practice, but no real evidence base for patient experience
• 70,000+ documents in the Patient Experience Library!
• All too often, patient stories are lost /not given due attention
• How can we make this vital information more accessible and usable for healthcare professionals?
• We need knowledge translation. It‘s no use just dumping piles of patient stories on busy healthcare professionals
• Statistics are seen as hard evidence. We need parity of esteem for quantitative and qualitative evidence
• Important to develop analytical tools
• On the clinical side, NHS brilliant at helping people learn. Evidence based.
• We need similar learning infrastructure and evidence base for patient experience
• The ‘Inadmissible evidence’ report, by Miles Sibley, is BRILLIANT. Let’s make patient experience admissible!
• Language is key. Patient ‘stories’. Medical ‘reports’.
• When clinicians say something is wrong, it's an ‘incident report’
• When a patient says something is wrong, it’s a ‘complaint’
• First do no harm. But harm is done when patient stories are not seen as important; when people are not listened to
• The GP says “Tell me, what is the matter?” Until you listen, you can’t possibly know what the problem is
• Something goes wrong between the individual clinician and when we get to the organisational/ system level
• Multiple healthcare disasters show the importance of listening to people and #WMTY
• How can NHS be BOTH evidence based and patient-centred?
• This can’t happen until listening to patients holds higher status
• Patient Experience Library is gathering the evidence and analysing it
• Evidence needs to be up-to-date - it’s no good hearing what happened a year ago
• Whose Shoes workshops collect immediate feedback - what is important now!
• Health inequalities - central to quality improvement work! Needs to be everyone’s job.
• National Voices, Care Opinion, Joanne Hughes... a lot of people are doing fantastic work!
• Connect!
• “Nobody’s patient”. Incredibly powerful title for our #WhoseShoes project. People falling through gaps in the system
• Same mistakes around patient safety happening over and over. Must break the cycle
• Look after the staff, they ’ll look after the patients
• ‘Small’ complaints (e.g car parking) might run much deeper. Listen.
• When Sir Simon Stevens stood down as NHS CEO, his No.1 message: LISTEN to patients!

Further resources

We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

Happy New Year!
I'm kicking off 2022 by talking to the person who helps bring our Whose Shoes events alive and ensures they have lasting impact. Our combined approach to coproduction has been described as magic. One and one definitely equals more than two.
Anna Geyer, Director of New Possibilities, is my long-term friend and partner in crime. We look back at what we've achieved together - a fascinating and often unpredictable journey, not least with everything we've had to change and develop during the pandemic.
We celebrate 20 years of Anna's fab enterprise. When I first invented Whose Shoes and jumped ship from my day job in 2008, I never knew I'd find a partner who’d add so much to what I was trying to achieve. Visual recording enables people to hold on to the conversations and ensure they lead to real action.
Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋

• Visual minutes ensure people’s voices are heard; they love seeing their contributions on a permanent record
• BIG responsibility to record people’s voices authentically
• You can’t demand that people have open, honest conversations
• Whose Shoes puts people at ease and creates the conditions for difficult conversations about sensitive topics; graphic recording captures these and inspires follow-up action
• Start with a blank canvas – you can’t pre-select key words and shoehorn the messages to fit
• Let the conversations flow, people will tell you what is important to them
• Through our engaging, informal approach, we see the culture of an organisation; whether people feel able to speak out, take ownership and make improvements without seeking permission
• People who go the extra mile in organising Whose Shoes events reap the benefits - participants feel the love that's gone into making them feel welcome and valued
• Display the graphic record in a prominent place to keep the conversations alive
• Similar themes come through all our workshops, regardless of topic: people united by vulnerability, who want their voices heard
• It’s powerful when people understand each other’s perspectives, then work together for positive change
• The board game, with its carefully researched scenarios, is used in even the most sensitive subject areas
• People welcome the opportunity to speak about their experiences, including difficult/taboo subjects
• Anna carefully records the words and the mood – no cartoons or caricatures
• Key messages are themed to give meaning, not distort the story
• Lemon lightbulbs - the impact of inappropriate language!
• It's hard to navigate systems – by looking across organisations, gaps are revealed; then people collaborate to join things up
• QI ideas are more likely to be embraced when they come from the team rather than imposed from on high
• Share snippets of the graphic records on social media!
• Whose Shoes brings out the things people want to say in a safe and anonymized way
• Unexpected outcomes – a woman in early labour used the graphic record as pain relief!
• People unite behind the key messages – it's no longer about what you think / I think, but what WE said
• “It would've taken 600+ meetings to get to the point we reached today!”

We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.