Who doesn’t love the chance to visit another health service for a tour and bit of an explore? It’s like the old school excursion… a chance to move away from the day-to-day to add to the learnings already achieved within their usual classroom environment.
I have been lucky enough to do just that as a mentor in the second tranche of the Transition to Practice program, run by the Australian Primary Care Nurses Association’s (APNA). My mentee works within a city-based Aboriginal Health Service, and I’ve had a couple of visits so far. It was refreshing to see the attitude of the staff in the organisation who welcomed me in and encouraged me to provide feedback and ideas while enjoying the opportunity.
Inter-health service visits don’t happen enough. It is important to get out and about to see how other health services interprete and deliver their healthcare. We can learn so much from each other, share ideas, maybe even equipment, and streamline our services for better outcomes.
Creating a culture of inter-service visits within the healthcare sector would help to prevent and breakdown service silos. The lack of connectedness that is a feature of many silos creates much duplication because people within the sector aren’t learning from each others disasters and successes. Continuity of care, innovation the ability to take ideas to a larger stage all are limited as collateral damage.
There is also greater potential for:
- Innovative service delivery
- Inspired thinking
- Networking
- Problem solving
- Service collaboration.
Of course not everyone welcomes others into their service. Maybe they feel protective of their strategies and service delivery, uncomfortable with scrutiny or don’t see a need to share or to be inspired because they think they are already the best at what they do. They may also feel they are too busy and there is no time to arrange and host the visit. Funnily enough, from my observations, the best health professionals and health services are usually great sharers and collaborators because it is this very interaction that triggers new ideas and innovative ways of doing things! Those who don’t let others visit their service miss out on a valuable business development strategy.
My visit to my mentees workplace has provided me with much food for thought on how I can work with the service in the future.It is invigorating too because it shakes up your thinking to keep things interesting and fresh. I find, if you visit a service with your attitude open, interest ignited and keen to learn, compare, share and be inspired, you will.
How do you collaborate with colleagues and other health services? Is it easy to arrange a visit to another service? What have you learnt from visiting other services? Leave a comment below to share your experiences, comments and ideas.
Don’t forget Jayne Lehmann provides health professionals with the opportunity to visit her clinical service or mentoring. You can arrange to sit-in on a clinic with Jayne to watch an expert clinician in action and boost your own diabetes care and education skills!
To find out more click here.