I was just so excited this week with the promise of a two-week holiday looming large. I couldn’t believe how much I needed a break already. I blame it on all this learning… and blogging!

The week very quickly became about getting everything to the point where it can be left for a while, along with habitual wishful thinking of trying not to pick up any new work in the meantime.

I must say that I failed miserably on all counts and worked too many hours. However, I did finally gasp that great sigh of relief as I pinged the last set of ‘please can you do…’ emails off, closed down the computer and shut the study door behind me.

So what went wrong?

End of the week, Friday morning, I had a planned conversation with a colleague who has done this service redesign stuff before. I admire her passion for improvement and her enthusiasm for her work. She’s a nurse by background and has a great sense of humour with lots of realism thrown in.

I’ve asked, as a novice to the game, if I might pick her brains with regards to process and the whole -  ‘what worked for you?’ and ‘what would you do differently next time?’ queries. During the chat she asks me how I am going to market my project with practice-based commissioning colleagues. Then the killer question: ‘How can I be sure they will want to commission my newly-designed pathway next year?’

Gulp! That question was the main reason why I didn’t actually switch off my computer until later than planned. ‘Oh dear’ (or something similar), ‘I don’t know,’ was my immediate answer, but I can think about it and sort it, can’t I?

Thank goodness the commissioning plan’s deadline is still a short while off. Thinking about it more coolly I was reassured that the strategic fit is already established and I know the formal and informal communication routes.  I can set up a marketing campaign, I can persuade with hard statistics, details of poor health outcomes, benchmarked performance, activity numbers and high costs. I can add influential stories of patients’ experiences and provide details, if required, of ‘buy in’ from a variety of local health and social care professionals. What else? Have I missed anything out? (Please let me know. How have you done it? What worked for you?)
 
You’ve guessed it, back to the project plan, again…………………