V.Garrick, Rhc Gastroenterology

Feeling valued – from the roots up

The GI CNS team have consistently achieved an iMatter report and completed an action plan. This year, however, there was a notable difference to the team approach to using the feedback from the report, and the value that this could add to their team.

In March 2018, I became a Fellow of the Foundation of Nursing Studies (FoNS). One of the aims of this programme is to support a Facilitative Leadership approach through recognising and addressing workplace culture.  Over the last 18 months the team have worked hard to reflect on their team dynamics and have steadily grown towards a more inclusive and collaborative and inclusive approach with a culture of honesty, openness and trust within the team. This effectiveness of this approach was very evident this year when reviewing and responding to our iMatter team report.

Collaboratively the team embraced the elements of the report which affirmed the excellent team dynamics evident in their day to day working. The areas for improvement were around the wider organisational section and they reflected on what they could do in response to these challenges. The team agreed that if there are gaps relating to visibility, engagement and inclusivity with more senior elements of the management team, then they would be proactive in inviting managers to come to them and would seek to more broadly share the achievements and challenges of their team and the services they deliver.

I highlighted that the whole team found their iMatter team discussion much more meaningful this year with the whole team seeing value in their collective feedback and collaborative approach to responding to this. I’m clear that the team have worked extremely hard on addressing their workplace culture, and whilst shifting this is something which takes a long time, they are seeing the benefits of this. In this context of a more caring workplace culture, iMatter was a valuable tool and provided a framework to help celebrate and progress the themes from our report.        

As part of our reflection at the end of our session we created a 'team tree' to illustrate how we see our CNS services. I loved this idea and with support from medical illustrations, turned it into a graphic for the team. We all love it! It's a poster in our workspace now to remind us a) that we care about and respect each other and b) why we're actually at work.