HEALTHCARE ESTATES 2022 KEYNOTES
richness, diversity, compassion, and skills they bring every day to improve the lives of the people we serve.”
Leaders will make the difference Nick Hulme said the ‘leadership challenge’ was ‘what you as leaders in the profession do’, adding: “To get the transformation David has talked about in terms of workforce will depend on the people in this room. Yes, the universities need to create the intelligence, skills, and science, but in terms of the people who rely on your care every day – you are as much caregivers as anybody else who wears a uniform or has a stethoscope round their neck – you will be the difference. For me, the biggest challenge we have around workforce transformation is encouraging more flexibility. We heard Sir David discuss the anaesthetist and the two anaesthetic assistants in that theatre space, but that will only happen if the Royal College accepts this, and if we get the flexibility as professionals and recognise the need for change. Sometimes the biggest challenge we have to changing workforce practices is ourselves, and our inability to accept that other people can do our jobs. During COVID, we saw extraordinary examples of people with skills just putting their hands up.” As the sector moved into what he dubbed the ‘most challenging and dark time, not just in the NHS, but for society’, the speaker said good leadership would ‘make the difference’.
Wider challenges across the service Nick Hulme told delegates that, on a wider front, there were ‘some real challenges’, as well as ‘massive opportunities,’ in the health service. He said: “For example, in one of the hospitals in the East of
England, 30% of women with breast cancer don’t go through completely unnecessary chemotherapy, because we now know that due to the genotyping of their particular cancer, chemotherapy will cause huge disruption to their lives, and massive risk to them in terms of being immunocompromised, with absolutely no impact on their tumour. When we consider that survival rates for cancer are better than we’ve ever seen, and some of the stem cell work that’s happening, the future of healthcare is incredibly exciting.” He had recently been talking to a medical student who was thinking about doing radiology, and had said to him: ‘Really? Are we really going to have people sitting in dark rooms in 10 years’ time looking at screens, or is it going to be AI?’ Nick Hulme said: “We now know that mammography software can identify tumours better than two specialist, consultant, breast radiologists. That software works 24/7, doesn’t talk to you about the BMA rate card, and never writes to me about car parking. So that’s undoubtedly the future.”
Waiting times and personal and professional challenges Acknowledging the current ‘waiting times worse than we’ve ever seen, an exhausted workforce, and all sorts of challenges with people’s personal and our professional lives, plus pressures on the people healthcare personnel serve often much greater than we could ever imagine’, the speaker asked ‘how we then build that bridge from our current state – building on and talking about hope to our staff, patients, and leaders, to that future state’? He said: “How do we take our ward workforce with us?” EFM professionals
were, in Nick Hulme’s view, ‘some of the most under-rated staff in the NHS, ignored by politicians, and often by leaders’. He said: “With this in mind, how do you make somebody feel valued, and that they’re making a difference to the lives of the people that we serve?”
A ‘life-saving’ role He added: “At 2.00 am one day in the middle of COVID I was in Colchester Hospital, and there were some engineers installing pipes who had never worked in healthcare before. I just said to them: ‘You know you’re saving lives.’ They questioned this, and I reiterated: ‘What you’re doing this minute, today, is saving a life’, and they got quite emotional. You cannot remind your staff often enough that every single thing they do, every single day, is saving a life. It’s a crying shame that it took COVID for us to realise that – and I hope that now we never forget it.” He concluded: “So, I just want to add
my thanks for all the work you and your colleagues do every day. My grandmother trained as a nurse in this part of the world, later becoming a Director of Social Services in Leicester. She was still advising me when she was 99 about how I should be doing my job – and never got it wrong. When I got my first management role – the fantastically titled ‘Manager of Sexual Health and Counselling’ at King’s College Hospital, I phoned her – she was in her 80s – and asked: ‘Grandma, What are the two bits of advice you’d give me?’ She said: ‘Firstly, Nick, always treat your staff the way you’d like them to treat the patients.’ Her second piece of advice was: ‘Never manage car parks.’ For all those of you in the audience that do, thank you.” This closed an interesting session.
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