Daniel Park, The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust
This year’s HLG conference focused on a great deal on the power of persuasion and influence. This was perhaps best exemplified by the concluding presentation from Louis Coiffait-Gunn, the CEO of CILIP, who outlined the organisation’s ten point pledge for the government and public to trust library, information and knowledge services.
Ruth Carlyle, Head of Knowledge and Library Services, NHS England and HLG Policy Lead, took a pragmatic view of power and influence, calling on us to use our innate ability to identify problems, research options and work alongside others to sway organisational, local and national policy. By doing this, we can become a solution to the predicaments of policy-makers, and exploit that leverage to influence the course of events in favour of library and knowledge services. Her advice to climb through open ‘policy windows’ and meet the unmet needs of our leaders, reminded me of the story of the Trojan horse. To adapt a well-worn phrase: “Beware of librarians bearing gifts!”
Continuing the theme, Mandeep Heer of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, spotted her window when a CQC inspection highlighted the number of outdated clinical policies in her organisation. Seizing the opportunity, she worked together with her medicine management committee to finalise a “Triple A” process which streamlined policy creation by adopting national policies first, then adapting where possible and only then assembling a local guideline if nothing was available. Her ability to identify problems, highlight options and work with the organisation’s Kaizen management approach to implement solutions, saved time for both her team and the organisation as a whole and quite rightly earned her service the respect it deserved.
On a more national scale, Louise Goswami and Alison Day at NHS England, discussed their three-pronged attack on poorly joined-up healthcare information strategies, through their implementation of primary care, integrated care and health literacy pilots. Ditching the horse analogy, Louise suggested we “be more chameleon”, keeping one ever-swivelling eye on local needs and the other on national policy. Consequently these three pilots worked alongside healthcare providers to identify local problems to climb through that ‘policy window’, whilst gathering the evidence needed to advocate for increasing resourcing in all three areas on a national level.
Last, but not least, we come to the Health Libraries Group itself: a horse that has been galloping flat-out for 77 years and shows no sign of slowing down. Jo Cornish, Chief Development Officer at CILIP outlined the organisation’s renewed community strategy; an offer to special interest groups which mutually agrees such groups should provide leadership and development, and recruit new members of the profession, but gives them free rein to pursue that in the best way they can. Providing national objectives, but letting the groups find their own policy windows to climb through, is like CILIP lending the Health Libraries Group the wood they need to build their own Trojan horse, but letting them choose the most receptive city states to present their ‘gifts’ to.
Health Libraries Group 