For some reason today I have felt in a reflective mood. Previously I have been reflective on my shortcomings. Today I decided to reflect on my professional life in a positive sense to reflect on what I have achieved and have to offer. So here is a short history of my 39 year people career.
I started as a volunteer on a medical elderly ward in the City Hospital, Chester in 1987 as a 16 year old school boy, At the time I was undecided what I wanted to do as a career.After the first day on the ward, my mind was made up. I wanted to be a Nurse. My mum persuaded me to stay in 6th form rather than going to do my nurse training in Chester when I got to 17 and a half. I applied for 3 Universities to do a degree in Nursing but in my heart of hearts I knew I was not interested in University or had the academic discipline to get the grades I needed. So I applied for Schools of Nursing. Back in the 80s Nursing was not a traditional degree qualification, you could apply to Schools of Nursing to do either 2 years pupil nursing to qualify as an Enrolled Nurse or 3 years student nursing to qualify as a Registered Nurse. Degree Nursing was at that time a 4 year course and not many people went that route. I wanted to go the Student Nurse route. I agreed to stay in 6th form and apply for Nursing to start in the autumn after 6th form. I was offered places at Liverpool, Nottingham and Hull. Hull was the only offer that was to start in the autumn, for the others there was a delay before I could start. I wanted to leave home at the same time as all my friends were going to University so I chose Hull. Hull was smaller than Liverpool and Nottingham and felt friendlier, so that made the decision easier.
On 1st October 1989 I moved to Hull. I will never forget that first night in Nurses Residence at HRI. I met my fellow newbies and we eventually found the Centre Club (Hull Royal Infirmary’s social club) where we were signed in as guests. We could not join yet as we did not have our payroll numbers. Dan on the door was very kind and got us signed in as guests. In the Centre Club we met fellow students and started to settle in.
Monday was our first day and we were introduced to our tutors. Stan Smith, Steve Knight and Tony Catania. At the end of my second year I did my paediatric placement on Ward 130 West at HRI, and that is where I realised I wanted to be a Children’s Nurse. In my 3rd year I applied for a job on Paediatrics. Nursing jobs at that time were relatively scarce, there were however vacancies on the children’s wards because to get a permanent job at that time you had to train to be a Registered Children’s Nurse which meant a further 15 months study. I was given a 12 month contract and had to apply for the RSCN course. My first day was December 27th 1992, on Ward 12 (Children’s ENT). I got on the RSCN course at Humberside College of Health (the new name for Hull School of Nursing) and started in the January of 1994. I qualified as a Sick Children’s Nurse in March 1995 and worked on ward 12 and ward 130 East (Paediatric Surgical Ward). Ward 130 East took everything surgical when I worked on there as Ward 12 eventually closed. It was a place to learn and learn fast. We cared for a lot of children who had major head injuries and multiple fractures following road traffic accidents and children post major surgery. In the mid to late nineties 130 East was a very challenging place to work. In 1996 I got married. In 1997 I decided I wanted to get some experience on ICU as at that time had 2 Paeds beds. Before I moved I spent a few months on ward 130 West
I spent a year on ICU before coming back to Ward 130 West in a rotational role with ICU. Which meant I spent a fe months of the year working on ICU, this arrangement fell down after about a year.
In 1999 I was promoted to F Grade (senior staff Nurse). In 2000 we had our first child. Ward 130 West was a Paediatric Medical ward, it was extremely busy and we cared for a lot sick Children. There was at the time a clamber for a High Dependancy Unit and eventually funding was secured to open one on Ward 120 (Baby ward). I applied for the role of Charge Nurse on PHDU but was unsuccessful, I did however get one of the senior staff nurse roles, and was one of the original team members of PHDU in 2001. That first year on PHDU was fantastic we all learned so much and bonded as a team. Clinically it was the best time of my career. We looked after some really sick children that pushed us to the limit of our knowledge and skill.
In the spring of 2002 we had our second child. In the summer Sister Denehy from Ward 130 West retired. I applied for the vacant Charge Nurse role and was successful.
I had plenty of clinical leadership experience, but I had no experience or knowledge of how to deal with the challenges I faced in the first 6 months of the job, including staff being suspended and inheriting a staffing establishment that did not meet the needs of the ward. I learned very quickly. I completed a couple of leadership courses and eventually managed to get a leadership qualification on the way. In the past I have concentrated on the failures and challenges during this time and not acknowledging what I achieved, so I am going to focus on those successes here. Firstly I modernised the staff structure of the ward by increasing the number of senior staff to support the complexity of our patients and help the development of new staff. I encouraged personal development of staff which resulted in a number of nurses moving onto specialist roles. I encouraged innovation with a member of our team winning a regional award for the development of a patient passport for children with complex needs who were unable to articulate their needs, providing piece of mind for parents when children were in our care. We developed a sensory room for children with complex needs. We also started an assessment unit on the ward that later developed into the Paediatric Assessment Unit.
In 2012 I completed my Clinical Supervision training, and if I am honest those 3 days changed my professional career. Not long after that the Children’s Unit was reconfigured and I was put at risk and ended up working as the Clinical Nurse Educator. My first project was to support the Safeguarding Children team in developing safeguarding supervision for staff across the organisation. I worked with colleagues in the community and developed an internal training programme for safeguarding supervision, and trained nurses across the organisation to enable them to supervise their colleagues. In addition I co-wrote our local Safeguarding supervision guidance. As the CNE for the Children’s Service I was responsible for nursing procedures and policies ensuring they were up to date and aligned with the wider organisation. I developed an induction programme for the newly qualified nurses, and provided regular clinical supervision and educational updates for our registered nurses. I worked with our medical colleagues to develop simulation training and human factors training. I delveloped human factors training for newly qualified nurses across the organisation. I mentored students from the local 6th form college who expressed and interest in Children’s Nursing. I worked with my colleague Janis delivering Clinical Supervision training across the trust back with the people that changed my career. In 2015 I spent a year on secondment for 1 day a week at University of Hull as a guest lecturer on the Child Health faculty delivering training to undergraduate Nurses.
In 2016 I started training to be a coach, for me this was an extension of the knowledge I gained from Clinical Supervision. Coaching just clicked for me. I knew on day one of the course that coaching would form a huge part of my career and would take me in a new direction. The coaching course was commissioned for the trust by my now boss Lucy, and during the course I showed so much enthusiasm that she offered me a secondment in the Organisational Development Team for 2 days a week to start a coaching network. I have not looked back. In 2018 I joined OD permanently all be it part-time. Along with Antony who delivered the coaching training I completed we ran 2 more cohorts of coaching trainees to increase our coaching network. The network during this time went from strength to strength. Then in 2019 there was an opportunity to make the role full-time, I went for the interview and got offered the job as a Senior OD Practitioner. When I took the job full-time I decided to give up my nurse registration. My first job as Senior Practitioner was to programme manage our in house leadership programme. As a CNE I had run programmes but on a much smaller scale and less stakeholders. It was definitely a steep learning curve.
In March 2020 our leadership programmes ground to a halt as the pandemic hit, I went over to HR and worked on the employee service centre helpline supporting staff who were worried they had covid. It was a very worrying, stressful and frustrating time. After a couple of weeks the plan was to pull me out as we had plans for supporting staff by distributing donated goods and having well-being conversations. Unfortunately I ended up getting covid myself and was laid low for about a month. When I came back staff support was in full swing, with staff support clinics online and face to face. I started visiting places under the most pressure, holding drop in clinics on the Covid wards. This continued right through to 2021. During this time I managed to complete a level 7 course in leadership coaching online.
I started delivering bite size leadership workshops online and learned very quickly how to deliver webinars. I also ran staff support 1:1s online and leadership support drop in sessions for managers across the trust.
When we were able we restarted our leadership programmes, online in the first instance. Working with Trans 2 Performance we managed to deliver meaningful leadership training for our teams online.
As teams were recovering after the pandemic a lot of teams needed support to comeback together and reconnect with a shared sense of purpose. I developed a Mission Statement creation workshop where teams could share their values and co-create their Mission Statements, for the teams that did it, it made a big difference for them bringing them closer together and reigniting their passion for caring for their patients. It is incredible to watch clinical staff talk with passion about the care they deliver to patients. Post Covid our team expanded, myself and Nami got promoted to OD Managers and Ruth joined us. Ruth took over leadership and I concentrated on team development and well-being. Amy joined me to support with clinical supervision training and well-being, Elaine joined the team and worked with Nami with EDI development work and team development, and Louise came across from Education to support with leadership training. Carly one of the originals returned maternity leave working across leadership and team development. The team had never been so big.
Myself and Amy continued to keep our hand in with Clinical Supervision providing training and delivering group supervision for clinical teams across the trust. As my work evolved I handed over the coaching network to Carly so I could concentrate on coaching and coaching supervision as well as line manage members of the team.
In 2024 Hull University Teaching Hospitals went into partnership with Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Foundation NHS Trust to form the group Humber Health Partnership. This provided me with a further career opportunity and I was able to take on the role of Head of OD North. I became the line manager of the OD team on the North bank of the Humber and have a portfolio responsible for Leadership, team development, coaching and mentoring and talent development across the group. It has been another steep learning curve working in partnership with teams right across the group and working very closely with the OD team on the South bank. I still manage to coach a variety of staff. As a group with have started using restorative practice as way of supporting teams and individuals working in volatile uncertain times. It helps staff individually and collectively identify what they need to improve on and take the right action. It is early days but I have been working with Restorative Labs on training that will support clinical and non-clinical staff use as an approach to look at the problems they face and manage the solutions that will really make a difference. I am also noticing this has changed the way I approach my coaching practice.
My career has changed dramatically over the past 36 years in one way and yet it has not changed at all. When I have got the most out of my career people have always been at the centre.
In fact what ever I do people need to be at the centre for me to feel fulfilled.
Connected Coaching 