12 health and care professionals announced as UCLPartners Aspiring Improvers

UCLPartners has selected 12 individuals to become the first cohort of the Aspiring Improvers programme. The participants come from across north central and east London and Essex, and have a wide range of backgrounds; from acute care to mental health, nursing staff and junior doctors, to project support and pharmacy.

The programme will provide training and development to help participants build their skills, knowledge and understanding of improvement. In addition, it will connect people at the start of their improvement journey and provide opportunity for open dialogue in a safe environment away from the usual workplace, offering time and space to reflect and plan.

The Aspiring Improvers Programme will help participants to develop the confidence, capability and capacity to get involved with, and eventually lead improvement within their organisation and beyond.  As such participants will support each other, their own organisations and others in delivering better results for patients and populations.  Importantly, they will also better equip themselves and their organisations to progressively improve over time.

The 12 month programme includes:

• Training in Quality Improvement skills
• Workshops which will include talks on improvement from experts and provide the opportunity to reflect and explore ideas, challenges and priorities
• Action Learning Sets providing additional peer support and challenge
• The opportunity to turn an improvement idea into a reality by designing and running an improvement project
• The opportunity to network and build a community of people to turn to for inspiration, support and expertise that go beyond current local and professional networks and endure over time, beyond the formal programme
• The opportunity to gain access to wider communities of improvers, such as the UCLPartners Improvement Fellows
• Access to learning resources

This initiative will help make those involved become visible and effective and further support development and improvement capability.  Organisations will benefit not only from the participant’s development, but also from better access to great ideas, opportunities and talent from across the system, which can then be harnessed and deployed for wider benefit.

Kate Hall, Director of Capability Development at UCLPartners said:

‘We are really thrilled to be launching the UCLPartners Aspiring Improvers Programme, which focuses on peer support and development for those who have recently started their work in improvement.   We received a very high calibre of applications, and these highlighted the significant passion and enthusiasm for improvement from people who perhaps wouldn’t normally have access to this type of multi-professional and cross-organisational peer learning.  We look forward to working with this inaugural cohort and are eager to see how both the participants and the programme develops over the next 12 months’.

Find out more about the Aspiring Improvers programme.