This was an initiative endorsed by the Director of Strategy.
Reason for the network: to connect the trust strategy with 5000+ staff and harness the staff as part of our journey to a flourishing hospital.
Goal of the network: to have willing frontline staff to become change agents and to have a change agent in each area of the organisation. Each change agent would work together to form the network. (Fabulous Change Agent Network)
Aims of the FabCAN:
To empower our frontline staff to implement rapid change in their area of expertise to improve patient outcomes/ safety/ experience/ quality of care and to enable the trust’s strategy and individual change ideas to interconnect and develop into a two way relationship
To provide an opportunity for the change agents to share their change journeys/ success/ learning with others – working at the edge both inside and outside the organisation.
I already had an internal network that I used for sharing information/ good practice. We met regularly and discussed and planned the launch of FabCAN.
An invitation was sent to all staff that had attended in-house and external QI training On the day we had 20 members of staff attend: doctors, nurses, specialist nurses, IT leads, chaplain, library staff, analysts, student nurses. We had the pleasure of Jon Wilkes and Jane Douthwaite form the Academy of Fab Stuff attend the trust and support us with the launch.
As the network was to organically grow, we discussed how to capture the energy in the room; #FabCAN for twitter users, a closed Facebook page was initiated, regular catch ups and members to sign themselves up for the School for Change Agents, run by NHS Horizons To share change projects with each other we are using the title ‘Three Minutes of Madness’. Three minutes to share you fab stuff.
It remains to be seen whether the network is a success or effective as it was launched in mid-November.
However, at this time of sharing we have 27 members in the network each contributing to its growth.
Members are being asked to talk at their team meetings about the network and the Academy of Fab Stuff.
We are looking forward to our third catch up at the end of January. Members are starting to ask if they can have three minutes of madness. There is a lot of activity on the Facebook page, staff having conversations each other. I’m sure we will keep the Academy of Fab Stuff posted with any further developments of the network and we will begin to see the fab stuff being shared by Wirral University Teaching Hospital.