Start spreading the word …

Over the past two years, COVID-19 has rightly dominated our time. I am now so looking forward to concentrating on our professional quality and experience agenda. Among several areas that I am focusing on is improving patient experience through effective nursing leadership.

One of the improvements to patient experience that I would like to embed is one that I have written about previously. Led by Dr Michael McCabe (2022), #CallMe is enabling patients at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust to have a simple way of indicating their preferred name to staff, following the rollout of a new section on patients' wristbands and labels. This benefits patients with dementia, those in recovery areas, and patients who prefer to use a name other than their given name. The feedback has been powerful.

My question is how best to lead this in my own organisation? As Mike McCabe is a friend of mine, we had a Zoom call with one of my nursing digital colleagues along with the fabulous Professor Brian Dolan, who spearheaded the movement ‘End PJ paralysis’. Brian's advice was to review the key thinking on how to create a social movement.