Education and training Archives - Page 3 of 3

CLiA panel discussion featured on international news site

April 6, 2018 | 8:10am

This week, an article about a panel discussion at our recent CLiA event is featured on the international hospice news site ehospice.

A panel of experts – which included St Ann’s Chief Executive Eamonn O’Neal, Chair of Trustees Professor Jackie Oldham, the Executive Lead for Quality from the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership Dr Richard Preece, and Dr David Waterman Palliative and End of Life Care Lead for the Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Strategic Clinical Network – gathered at the event to celebrate the graduation of thirteen St Ann’s nurses from our new Clinical Leadership in Action (CLiA) programme.

The future of hospice care was a key topic discussed by the panel, and its place in the bigger health and social care landscape. Other topics put to the panel included the role of hospices in their local communities, and the importance of hospices working together.

You can read more of the discussion by clicking here.

Greater Manchester Hospices initiative

April 5, 2018 | 8:10am

Hospices across Greater Manchester, including St Ann’s, are leading the way with a unique partnership to help influence the future provision of specialist palliative and end of life care for local people.

The GM Hospices initiative, which is the first of its kind in the UK, sees Greater Manchester’s seven adult hospices (St Ann’s, Bolton, Bury, Dr Kershaw’s, Springhill, Wigan and Leigh and Willow Wood) working together to promote the inclusion, assimilation and commissioning of specialist palliative and end of life care provided in the area.

Eamonn O’Neal, Chief Executive of St Ann’s, explained: “The health and social care landscape in Greater Manchester is incredibly complex, and as experts in delivery of specialist palliative and end of life care, hospices know that they need to ensure they are shouting loudly with one voice to help influence care decisions for local people.”

This isn’t about hospices losing their own individual identities, as we are firmly rooted within the communities we serve and we know that’s incredibly important to our patients. However, as experts who have been delivering care for hundreds of years between us, we are also keen to come together to offer solutions to the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership around end of life and palliative care, and to support them even further in its delivery.

Eamonn O’Neal, Chief Executive of St Ann’s

The first stage of the joint partnership work is the engagement of a Project Manager who will work strategically to inform the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, and encourage and develop collaborative working between the organisations.

The group has appointed Manchester-born Martin Foster (pictured above), who will be relocating back to the area from his current London-based role as Senior Manager, Strategic Finance, for NHS Improvement.

Leigh Vallance, Chief Executive of Bolton Hospice and Chair of the GM Hospices group, said: “We’re incredibly excited about this new role and that it’s the first step on a much larger journey for hospices in Greater Manchester.

“Modern hospices offer such a wide range of specialist services in support of the NHS, and we need to ensure our voice is heard so that our patients and their families can continue to receive high quality, individualised and holistic care right when they need it most. We’re really looking forward to Martin joining all of our teams.”

Martin, 35, will begin his new role as GM Hospices Project Manager in July. He said: “I’m incredibly excited to be taking on this brand new role, and can’t wait to get started.

Modern hospices are incredibly complex, innovative organisations, and there are so many opportunities for me to work with the seven teams to really cement their collaborative ways of working and help to influence and shape care for people across Greater Manchester.

Martin Foster, upcoming GM Hospices Project Manager

“On a personal note, I was born in Urmston and I love Manchester, so I’m really looking forward to moving back to the North West.”

We’re really looking forward to welcoming Martin to St Ann’s when he starts his role in July.

Celebrating success in clinical leadership

March 29, 2018 | 8:05am

The future of hospice care, and its place in the bigger health and social care landscape was the hot topic debated at a recent St Ann’s event.

Experts in specialist palliative and end of life care from across both the hospice and the wider health and social care sector across Greater Manchester, gathered together to celebrate a group of St Ann’s nurses graduating from an innovative new development programme for nurse leaders.

The thirteen nurses from St Ann’s Hospice were the first ever graduates of Clinical Leadership in Action (CLiA) – a twelve month programme aimed at providing effective and sustainable nursing leadership to ensure the delivery of high quality care to hospice patients. The programme, which emerged from a successful grant application from the Burdett Nursing Trust, was developed to help ensure senior nurses are equipped and ready for the opportunities and challenges ahead, especially within the ever-changing health and social care landscape across Greater Manchester.

The event, which was hosted by the BBC’s North West Tonight host Roger Johnson, also included a special panel discussion about the future of hospice care, and how it sits alongside plans held by the devolved Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership.

You can read more about the discussion here.

St Ann’s Chief Executive shares story for international news site

March 12, 2018 | 4:32pm

At St Ann’s we’re always looking at ways to collaborate with others – whether that’s by working with partners in the NHS or health and social care sectors, members of the local communities the hospice serves, or the generous supporters who make what we do possible.

This week, our Chief Executive Eamonn O’Neal was pleased to be asked to write a piece for international hospice news site eHospice, about why cooperation is more important than ever, and how charities should be loud and proud of what they do.

You can read more by clicking here.

St Ann’s manager shares story for news site

March 12, 2018 | 10:48am

We were pleased to contribute to the eHospice ‘Working Life Of…’ series this week, with a contribution from one of our managers from St Ann’s.

Justine Riches is our Training and Development Manager and in the article, written especially for the online news site, she tells us about the satisfaction she gets from helping to develop the skills of our St Ann’s workforce.

You can read more by clicking here.

Governance training – what can experienced trustees learn?

March 10, 2017 | 1:10pm

The one thing virtually all hospices have in common is that we are charities. Yes we operate multi-million pound businesses, but we are also a charity and are guardians of the money donated by the public for service provision. The governance of charities is more onerous than that of companies; we are more regulated and need to be more transparent in our transactions.

I’ve been a trustee of various charities since 2002 and I have always placed a huge importance on governance. So when Antonia, Hospice UK’s director of hospice support and development, asked me if I would like to attend Hospice UK’s two-day pilot Masterclass on Building Better Hospice Governance I was a little sceptical about how much I would learn. Well, I was pleasantly surprised and as it’s a pilot, I thought it would be useful for me to provide my personal feedback on the course in case you are thinking of attending in the future.It was run by Fiona Ash and Christine Fogg from the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Cass Business School, City, University of London. I know Fiona very well as she has done a board development session with Hospice UK and is about to do the same for St Ann’s Hospice.Participants were a diverse mix of trustees and senior managers from hospices across the country and from Jersey.The two days were split into several sections:

Accountability – an exploration
Running effective meetings
Board involvement in strategy
Reports and dashboards
Board evaluation and performance review

The course was a mix of workshops, discussion and taught material and we were given a complete set of the slides. We had a lot of discussion between us and shared good practice throughout the two days. We were given some useful examples from other charities and also from Fiona’s work with hospices. We were given a number of books to read if we wish – I am, in particular, going to hunt out Charles Handy’s book: The Second Curve (2015).

So I realised that even if you have been doing years of charity governance there is still more to learn.

I came across for the first time the three governance mind-sets:

Generative mode – being supportively inquisitive
Fiduciary mode – ensuring proper stewardship of tangible assets
Strategic mode – in partnership with management

What did I take away with me? In particular, I took away:

Thoughts on restructuring our committee structure at St Ann’s Hospice to maybe look at one committee that focuses on the internal aspects of the charity and one to focus on the external aspects; so to have a finance and peoples committee and then an income generation committee.
Most of us realised that we don’t spend enough time on strategic issues at the Board, so allocating some time at each Board meeting to look at a strategic issue is valuable.
I got a number of examples of good dashboards and KPIs which has prompted discussions locally to review ours.
The majority of us had already got board and trustee appraisal systems in place but we recognised the usefulness of an ongoing skill-mix review to inform recruitment and training of trustees. A few of us shared our skill-mix reviews that we had implemented in our own hospices.

I came away from the two days having gained a number of new contacts, new ideas and good examples of current practice, and wondering about how Hospice UK can continue to strengthen the dialogue and sharing of good governance practice across hospices.

The Building Better Hospice Governance masterclass is part of Hospice UK’s Governance Support Programme.

University of Manchester and St Ann’s collaborate on new study

September 23, 2016 | 12:13pm

Professor David Holman, Professor Leo McCann, Dr Clare Mumford from Alliance Manchester Business School, and Dr Maurice Nagington from the Division of Nursing, are carrying out the project to understand more about what employees do when they treat patients gently, and how that gentleness is fostered by organisations.

The study, which includes extensive observation of daily work at the hospice, actively involves staff and patients in the data collection process, with the majority of observations being carried out during day care sessions.

Gentleness is a form of care-giving about which relatively little is known, but as anyone who has been a patient themselves will understand, being treated gently can be an extremely important and valued part of the care received.

From our research, we know that the level of care provided by St Ann’s is excellent and we were able to observe many instances of staff and volunteers being gentle by caring for patients in an unhurried, warm, friendly and compassionate manner. We’re really interested to learn more about what that means to those being cared for, and we hope that the results will help other organisations apply some of the same techniques, where appropriate.

Professor David Holman

Feedback we receive from our patients and their loved ones shows that the professional, kind and gentle approach we apply to their care is greatly appreciated and has a huge impact on their experience in the hospice. We’re looking forward to seeing the results of the study, and, as a local business, it’s a pleasure to collaborate with experts from the university in this way. It’s also exciting that the results of this project will hopefully be shared with other health and social care practitioners, as we’re always happy to share our knowledge and expertise in end of life care with others.

Rachel McMillan, deputy chief executive and director of clinical services at St Ann’s

The project is funded by the Lord Alliance of Manchester donation to the Alliance Manchester Business School.

Theme: Education and training