Health Visiting Example Application, Study notes of Nursing

Download Health Visiting Example Application and more Study notes Nursing in PDF only on Docsity! Health Visiting Example Application 2. IN SUPPORT OF YOUR APPLICATION – please read the excellence profile in the guidance document and give us examples from your practice of how your expertise matches the areas below. Please remember this is not a job application, we are not looking for a list of achievements, rather your ability to reflect and describe the impact of your skills and behaviours on others. Each statement begins with the question HOW? How have you made a difference? • changing how things are currently done • making things better for individuals, families and communities • helping others to make a significant impact Alongside my QN application form I have compiled a poster collage to help you visualise my journey working within community nursing. The images I have chosen and snap shot quotations taken from my reflective diary over the years aim to offer a symmetrical interaction with the hope you may feel an emotional connection from my reflections offering an insight to me as a person. Being part of the Children and Young People Early Years Improvement Collaborative (EYC) within Scotland was a proud moment for me as a practitioner and I truly appreciated the value of patient care. The ambition of the EYC is to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up by improving outcomes, and reducing inequalities, to families across Scotland ensuring that all children have the best start in life. On reflection, I had an amazing opportunity to have a voice for individuals, families and communities across the Health Board. I felt inspired to make a difference and created an improvement project using the Plan, Do, Study, Act model which I found daunting to begin with as had never utilised a model previously when making improvements. My project aim was to empower parents to increase the awareness of developmental milestones for their children and actively utilise their child health record ‘Red Book’ reviewing the developmental sections within. You will see within my poster I have included my picture presentation that was displayed at the EYC conference highlighting my work. This was such an amazing experience for me as a practitioner having a voice and working with others with shared values. Positively, my improvement project provided increased rates on the uptake of the 27 to 30 month Child Health Review within the Health Board resulting in a Child’s developmental needs being identified and responded to earlier. By parents actively utilising their Red Book empowered them to review their children's development, keeping them involved promoting early intervention. Helping parents make a significant impact in their Child’s life was truly inspiring. I learned a great deal from this experience and the improvement work allowed me to move forward with purpose. It made me question future visions in practice and question how things are done. Self Belief/Resilient workforce: Within the teams I manage I am actively trying to challenge mindset, promote resilience and self belief in relation to all Health Visitors (HV’s) being newly appointed as Band 7 practitioners in Scotland. Through reflective discussion with my teams some practitioners have had a crisis of confidence during this process. This has been a difficult and exhausting experience for me as a team leader to manage. I strive to manage my teams by guiding initiatives, empowering and steering my individual team members to reach their full potential and goals. However, I have had a lot of resistance and uncertainty with the HV’s questioning their new job description, role and responsibilities. Positively, through regular discussions, opportunities to deeply reflect and one to one supervision with team members their leadership skills and self belief is improving which I feel proud to be a part of thus, shaping the care they provide to our future community service. (no more than 3500 characters which is around 500 words) How have you demonstrated your tenacity and resilience? • finding your way across boundaries, around obstacles, through bureaucracy • successfully challenging attitudes • finding new doors to open each time one closes • being prepared for continuous change, development and transformation With the implementation of the Children’s and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, and recent proposed mandatory Named Person scheme for every child underpinned by law removed has created huge challenges within our Health Visiting workforce. The bureaucracy around these changes has been confusing for Health Visitors and partner agencies to fully understand what their role is in delivery of a Child’s Planning Meeting. This has been a huge obstacle to overcome as some members of my team felt that because they had no legal responsibility to conduct a personalised multi- disciplinary Child’s Plan they would not conduct one. I experienced a significant amount of resistance from my teams, primarily due to the lack of understanding for the need to change. This worried me as I was concerned that families would suffer. I questioned whether there would be a consistent approach to planning, delivery and co-ordinated support for children in the Health Board? As a team leader I have found it extremely challenging to question my teams practice as received negativity, disruptive behaviours leading to poor morale. I evaluated and made sense out of this situation by understanding the potential negative impact this would have on families. Through persistence and determination I established a training package as part of a short life working group for all Health Visitors across the Health Board to attend face to face training. The delivery of this training was a daunting process as I was concerned about the negativity from practitioners I would receive but through perseverance, reflective discussions within peer groups we established a pendulum change over a period of one year. Whilst maintaining an open dialogue with team members I was able to challenge these attitudes. I also reflected on my part in the change, including my frustrations with behaviours and attitudes of my teams. I learned more about the individuals in my teams and team dynamics and the insecurities they had. Trust: As a Team Leader I endeavour to make the work environment a place where staff feel able t have open and honest communications and feel safe to share their views, visions and values. This achieved during team meetings, supervision and regular visits to the team bases. I aim to provid visibility to staff and carry through on actions which I feel is greatly important thus building trust. I utilis my skills and strengths to role model an enthusiastic positive attitude, encouraging and inspirin individuals I work. (no more than 3500 characters which is around 500 words) How have you brought people with you? • using your enthusiasm and persuasive nature • creating a ground swell of support and getting others to commit and get things done • staying connected with important others • Working with crisis as a development opportunity. I am an experienced practitioner with a range of knowledge and skills who prides myself in positive and role modeling behaviors’ which I believe gives me credibility. As a team leader and practitioner I gain a great deal of satisfaction seeing people progress whether it is families that I have worked with or career progression of my peers. My leadership style when working with my teams can be varied (no more than 3500 characters which is around 500 words) Page Break 4. YOUR ISSUE FOR DEVELOPMENT – please read the guidance document and tell us about the issue you have agreed with your sponsor which you will develop over the course of this programme. Please set out the nature of the issue or community need you wish to address, who will be involved, how you plan to engage those affected and what you hope might be achieved, whilst recognising that the emphasis is on co-production so that plans will emerge as you listen to the views of others. Nature of issue: Within the Universal Health Visiting Pathway in Scotland: pre-birth to pre-school presents a core home visiting programme to be offered to all families by health visitors as a minimum standard. Offering support to families during the early weeks and planning future contacts. Focussing on family strengths, while assessing and respectfully responding to their needs. Currently within our service and delivery of our HV Pathway we are not actively responsive to the ‘Health Literacy’ needs of families we work with. The World Health Organisation (WHO) contains the following definition: Health literacy refers to the personal characteristics and social resources needed for individuals and communities to access. Those with a lower level of health literacy are therefore more likely to suffer from health inequalities that lead to the poorest health outcomes in society. Health Visitors play a pivotal role educating parents and are vital in supporting families to access health care and services. Surprisingly, we do not routinely ask parents if they can read or write and it is not included within our Universal HV Pathway Guidance. One in Four adults in Scotland experience challenges due to their lack of literacy skills which is a pro-founding statistic. Health Literacy is being increasingly recognised as a significant public health concern around the world. This was a major light bulb moment for me! I could not believe that we do not actively address this issue across our service. We give an abundance of leaflets out to families and do not ask if they can read or write. I also took into consideration our growing Ethnic Minority Community across the area and how they could be supported better from a language perspective with more than just the interpretation service. On reflection, I have never once been asked if I could read or write when accessing any health care services within the organisation. It got my mind thinking, I am intrigued and want to explore further. My curiosity and exploration of digital devices within our service has begun and whether we have any readily accessible? The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 states that people should be communicated with in a way that they can understand and that healthcare staff should make sure the patient has understood the information given. Improving people’s understanding is crucial for improving patient safety, communication, effectiveness, self management and health literacy. In the first instance a small group of Health Visitors will be involved to actively ask the question at certain Pathway contacts. The initial antenatal contact may be a positive place to start when first meeting a family and beginning to build a relationship. This would then guide the future Pathway visits and how the HV would implement her health promotion advice to a family inclusive of their individual needs. The HV would also be equipped with available resources for the family for suture contacts. To complete an improvement project with Plan Do Study Act tool to review outcomes and impact. I would complete a small test of change by asking Health Visitors within a small community to ask service users in the first instance. Learn from my findings and move on to a bigger community based setting. Although this sounds like a minor question to ask it will have a huge impact on service users within our local communities being able to access appropriate resources and engage with health care providers. My big ambition is to implement this question to be part of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway in Scotland and be asked to all service users. I appreciate that this is a direct question that may be off putting for lots of individuals to answer so I need to work on this approach and possibly incorporate teach back tool? I would like to further unpick this and the views of others would be extremely beneficial. To be a part of the QNIS would allow me to explore my future vision with the support of people who share passion and vision to create and develop improvements within community care for patients across Scotland. (no more than 4000 characters which is around 550 words) Please check your completed application before it is emailed to QNIS. All sections must be completed or the application cannot be put forward to the assessment panel.