Helen Kilgannon is AQuA’s
Strategic Portfolio Lead. Following her recent visit to the International Conference for
Integrated Care
in Dublin, she shares her thoughts on the power of language used in healthcare,
and how change in this can help support better systems.
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| Helen Kilgannon |
I feel a great sense of pride for what the North
West has achieved; there were presentations referencing the excellent work across
systems in Millom, Salford and Halton leading changes to improve wellbeing,
health and community engagement.
The
conference had a really strong focus on engaging the patient. I was struck by the
barrier language can be… and I don’t mean the myriad of international languages
spoken at the conference.
How often do we in
health and care refer to people by condition, behaviour or place in our system:
multi-morbidity, complex needs, long term condition, difficult mother,
intermediate care patient?
Based on the
label we give someone we make assumptions and judgements about the person,
often focusing on a deficit or emphasising a level of complexity before we have
even met the person.
How nice would
it be, if like the work in Wigan, we started from a point of asking “what
matters to you?” and ask the question in their community not our buildings.
How we enable
and support people would be shaped by listening to their views, wishes and
choices. Perhaps then we could move to a place where we don’t need to define
people by conditions to fit into our systems, and integration would be truly
person orientated.
There is
great learning from international models including Nuka, Buurtzorg and Local Care Coordination on how we
can intentionally redesign our systems to meet the needs of a population
through building on assets.
So what’s in a word?
I think the
key word is Intentional, asset based
working is not an add-on; it’s an intentional change in the way we approach
population wellbeing.
More thoughts to follow in my next blog, so stay tuned...
