An ongoing supportive partnership and skills transfer with Princess Alice Hospice
Ad Esse have spent the past two years working with the team at Princess Alice Hospice on multiple projects and have transitioned into a mentorship role with ad hoc consultancy. Princess Alice Hospice covers a care area of 600 sq miles, with a population of one million people in Surrey, south west London and Middlesex, providing a range of services for patients and carers.
Initial improvement work
The first project Ad Esse delivered with Princess Alice Hospice was to train a core team of practitioners in continuous improvement skills. This was led by Konstantina Chatziargyriou, who was at the time the Head of Quality Improvement for clinical services at the Hospice. The training took place alongside a service review of several services including clinical, bereavement, therapies, wellbeing and carer support, and involved customer journey engagement and mapping. This led to three pathway reviews - bereavement, pre-bereavement (carers’ experience) and referrals. Since then, Ad Esse have undertaken a variety of projects in partnership with Konstantina, who now leads change across the whole Hospice:
Development of a Hospice wide performance framework
Customer experience service review, including retail administration
Employee and volunteer journey review
European Certificate in Essential Palliative Care (ECEPC) qualification process review
Compassionate Neighbours’ mini-review
e-prescribing process mini-review
Customer journey mapping for the Hospice’s legacy fundraising function
Overtime claims and travel expenses mini-review.
“We are at the point now where I work on a retainer basis and Konstantina calls me in to work in partnership with her on various Continuous Improvement (CI) pieces of work. My role is now more advice and support. In the two years that we’ve been working there, the Hospice has moved from reflection on Continuous Improvement and its place in the Hospice, through to being keen to apply the principles. They are now at a place where managers are identifying the need for change/improvement and are coming to Konstantina for advice and support. They also implement what they design and are now working on benefits’ capture as a fundamental across the Hospice. It’s great working with Konstantina and the team at Princess Alice Hospice and supporting them on their continuous improvement journey.”
(Rebecca Gamlin, Associate at Ad Esse Consulting)
“I really admired the way they approached sharing their knowledge and expertise within the organisation. This meant, that not only could we develop skills in our wider organisation, but we were also able to support the professional development of others. It also led to sustainable changes as knowledge and skills increased within the in-house team.”
(Lesley Munro, Deputy CEO and Director of Patient Care and Communities)
Konstantina’s thoughts on the partnership
‘’I didn’t know what to expect when I started working with Ad Esse, because the first project was three months long with lots of workshops and could have been potentially overwhelming. Even though it was new for us, everyone at Princess Alice Hospice had a positive experience. The consultants took the time to understand the service and guide us into finding our own solutions.
“We soon built a very close relationship with the lead consultant, Rebecca Gamlin, and I was guided & reassured throughout the process when working with any Consultant from Ad Esse.”
(Konstantina Chatziargyriou, Head of Service Design & Continuous Improvement at Princess Alice Hospice)
Skills transfer: leading workshops
Whilst leading projects, I was mentored by Ad Esse throughout, learning how to run a workshop and not offering solutions even if you know them. When you’re working with people from different teams, backgrounds, disciplines, agendas and priorities, you’re likely to hit blocks and worry that you’ll be stuck for the rest of the day. It was amazing to see how Ad Esse applied skills to push workshops forward without giving a solution, and then coached me to acquire the skills myself.
Leading improvement work without specialist knowledge
In my role, I work with teams across all departments, including Clinical and Community Services, Education, Marketing and Communications, Income Generation, People Services, Volunteering and more; it’s a challenge to lead a service review or project without knowing the ins and outs of every speciality. Ad Esse is very good at this, and Rebecca taught me a lot about leading improvement work without specialist knowledge of each field.
Rebecca was very respectful of the unique work we do at Princess Alice Hospice and took the time to understand that. She also took the time to form relationships with everyone involved. Working on more of an ad hoc basis, Rebecca pops in once every two or three months and it will take her ages to cross the building because so many people will stop her for a chat or take her to lunch. This is pretty amazing for an external person to form relationships with so many people across the organisation because they’ve done a few workshops together. I think it’s a personality trait, but also the culture of the way Ad Esse works with clients.
Creating a culture of continuous improvement
We’re on a journey of continuous improvement and know our capabilities and skills in the organisation. I think we’re in a very different place compared to three years ago, which has gradually and organically altered over time. Ad Esse has brought us to a place where we have the knowledge, skills, tools and culture to carry out improvements ourselves. There is less fear of change and increasing demand for improvement work as people will come to me as the improvement and change lead and ask for a project. Delivering projects that are successfully implemented with benefits is inspiring and encouraging for people; it demystifies the whole improvement and change concept.
We’re in a place where we’re benefit-minded and have built skills and confidence across many departments in the organisation. Time savings, customer and service user experience, and impact of changes are three of many improvements made at Princess Alice Hospice.
“I will go back to the team at Ad Esse if I have a specific question, or a new piece of work, or I want to do something we haven’t done before. Our partnership is more about mentorship and ad hoc consultancy now. It’s an empowering way of working without creating dependencies; we have a very sustainable relationship now and I hope we continue this journey together.”
(Konstantina Chatziargyriou, Head of Service Design & Continuous Improvement at Princess Alice Hospice)
(Pictured above) Rebecca Gamlin & Konstantina Chatziargyriou
Konstantina Chatziargyriou, Head of Service Design & Continuous Improvement at Princess Alice Hospice, shares her thoughts on the partnership in this case study