Thursday 22 May 2025 | 13:15-14:30

Format: Presentation

Stream: Leading

Content filters: Recommended for those working at system level in QI

Session chair: Marie Storkholm Regionshospitalet Horsens; Denmark

 

PART ONE: Continuous compassionate improvement: our work bringing together compassionate leadership and continuous quality improvement

Learn how to bring together the principles and frameworks of ‘compassionate leadership’ and continuous improvement.

This session will showcase the work of The Kings Fund and the NHS University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (UHDB), who are working collaboratively to co-deliver a system-wide improvement approach involving more than 600 NHS clinicians, managers and wider staff.

This interactive session will build on the concepts outlined by Amy Edmondson (key at the International Forum, May 2024) on compassionate leadership, psychological safety and kindness and its integration with quality improvement mindset focussed on patient flow.

Participants will have the chance to:

• Learn more about how the building-blocks of ‘compassionate leadership’ are being applied to develop hundreds of leaders across a large hospital system


• Hear directly from clinicians and experts by experience at UHDB who have both led and been personally impacted by this work


• Take away some simple frameworks, with practical case studies, that they can apply in their own context, to better integrate compassionate leadership with continuous improvement methodologies

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Discuss the potential polarity between compassionate leadership and continuous quality improvement thinking and how this may play out in strategic thinking


• Have a deeper understanding of the power of compassion with healthcare and the need for its embrace within organisational cultures


• Discuss the challenges of delivering leadership programmes at scale whilst retaining an experiential learning philosophy

Alistair Thomson The King’s Fund; England

Petra Bryan University Hospitals Derby and Burton; England

 

PART TWO: Nurturing Happier Working Lives: Insights from an improvement approach to well-being at work

This workshop offers invaluable insights into one organisations (Solent NHS Trust) implementation of the Happier Working Lives (HWL) programme – a transformative initiative, facilitated by NHS Elect, to empower teams to enhance joy, motivation and resilience at work.

We will share key themes, learnings and practical strategies that have driven meaningful, sustainable change for frontline teams. Delegates will gain a deeper understanding of how the HWL approach can be used to unlock team potential and build a culture of support and compassion.

Whether you are seeking to revitalise staff morale, boost retention or simply create a more fulfilling work environment, this session promises actionable insights to kickstart your own journey towards happier working lives. Join us to be inspired, utilising HWL’s tools and activities, cultivating thriving resilient healthcare teams.

• Unlock team potential and build a culture of support and compassion, harnessing the power of small incremental improvements


• Navigate common implementation challenges and secure leadership buy-in


• Foster a collaborative, empathetic approach to workplace wellbeing

Anita DeHavilland Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare Foundation NHS Trust; England

Jeni Malpass Hampshire & Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; England

 

PART THREE: What healthcare needs now: frontline first

In the current healthcare environment where compassion fatigue and burnout are pervasive, motivating exhausted healthcare workers to engage in quality improvement efforts is more challenging than ever. Healthcare executives can look to other industries for transferable learnings and craft such learnings toward their own team’s needs.

During this session, Dr. Tom Spiegel, MD, MBA, MS will share leadership lessons and a novel quality improvement approach called “Frontline First” that drew from his 3 decade journey through the corporate and healthcare worlds and crafted collectively with the Quality Teams at UChicago Medicine. This session will focus on the components of a successful approach that develops an employee-centric and quality-minded culture.

• Learn how to integrate successful approaches from non-healthcare industries to healthcare


• Explore the tangible benefits of employee-centric leadership


• Understand the many and varied benefits of a “Frontline First” approach

Thomas Spiegel University of Chicago; USA