Category: TEDxNHS blog

Celebrating 75 Years of the NHS: Personal Journeys into Nursing at TEDxNHS

This year marks 75 years of the NHS. When it was founded in 1948, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, free at the point of delivery. In honour of the 75^th birthday, Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) celebrated 75 years of nursing and midwifery at TEDxNHS Undivided. The Foundation supported TEDxNHS by subsidising 75 tickets so that those with less means could attend this year’s talks. FNF also held a side-bar event to share two moving stories about journeys into nursing. These talks provided a poignant reminder of the compassion and dedication of those who have chosen nursing or midwifery as their calling.

A Christmas miracle crafted by compassion

One of the speakers, Bev, shared a moving talk about how an act of compassion and kindness from a Ward Sister inspired her to become the nurse she is today. Bev spoke about when her mother was in hospital when she was a little girl and how the Ward Sister moved mountains so that she and her sisters could wake up on Christmas morning with her mother in her ward.

“This miracle happened due to the never-ending tenacity of the ward sister who fought to keep the family together. She managed to ring-fence a four bedded bay. The girls could sleep by their mother’s side on Christmas eve!”

Her story was a testament to the unwavering compassion and care that nurses embody. It was the care, empathy, and expertise of the Ward Sister that inspired Bev to pursue a career in nursing. Today, she is a Deputy Divisional Director for Nursing and Quality at an NHS Trust and her little sister followed in her footsteps, working as a midwife.

Bev Summerhayes sharing her story of how a nurse’s compassion towards her as a young girl inspired her to become a nurse herself.

Bev’s talk highlighted the role nurses play in not only treating illnesses but also providing emotional support to patients and their families. Her journey was a shining example and reminder of how an act of kindness can last long in the memory and can even shape one’s path and future career.

A story of a nurse’s uniform

Greta shared her lifelong ambition of becoming a nurse. As a young girl, Greta dressed up and played nurses and always dreamed one day of putting on the uniform for real. At TEDxNHS Undivided, she took the side-bar audience on her journey into nursing, bouncing back from an illness that ultimately saw her leave education at 16.

Greta holds up the nurse’s costume she wore as a little girl that her mother had kept all these years.

Professor Greta Westwood is now the CEO of Florence Nightingale Foundation with over 40 years’ experience in nursing. Her nurse’s uniform hangs on the back of her office door, alongside her PhD gown, serving as a reminder of her achievement and the principles of nursing. 

“The story of this nurse’s uniform continues, a symbol of dreams fulfilled, lives touched, and the enduring power of compassion in the world of nursing”.

Greta’s talk was a celebration of determination and the pursuit of one’s dreams, no matter the obstacles. Her story resonated with many in the audience who may have their own dreams waiting to be realised. 

These two personal stories served as a beautiful tribute to the NHS and the countless nurses who have dedicated their lives to providing healthcare to the people of the UK. They reminded us that nursing is not just a profession; it’s a calling driven by a deep desire to make a positive impact on the lives of others.

As we celebrated 75 years of the NHS, the Florence Nightingale Foundation sidebar talks at TEDxNHS were a poignant reminder of the human side of healthcare and the extraordinary individuals who continue to shape its future. They demonstrated that the spirit of compassion, resilience, and lifelong learning is at the heart of nursing, ensuring that the NHS continues to thrive for generations to come.

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Professor Greta Westwood

Greta joined the Florence Nightingale Foundation in 2017 as the Chief Operating Officer and has been the CEO since September 2019. Greta has been a Registered Nurse for 40 years and is a Florence Nightingale Foundation Alumna (2012 Leadership Scholar). In December 2020, Greta was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List 2021 for services to Nursing and Midwifery.

Bev Summerhayes

Bev started her nurse training 30 years ago and has worked in a variety of specialities and healthcare settings. Bev is passionate about delivering high quality care, supporting health and wellbeing of the workforce and improving patient and carer experience. Bev is currently Deputy Divisional Director for Nursing and Quality at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust. She has just completed an Emerging Leader Scholarship with the Florence Nightingale Foundation.

About Florence Nightingale Foundation

Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) supports nurses and midwives to improve care and save lives. As a UK-based charity, established almost 90 years ago, FNF is now expanding to reach one million nurses and midwives by 2027. 

FNF’s focus is on improving health, clinical outcomes and patient experience by: supporting, developing and transforming compassionate leaders; influencing policy; and promoting evidence-based practice. Learn more about FNF and what they do on their website here: https://florence-nightingale-foundation.org.uk/

Some of the TEDxNHS talks that we hope will:
bring some strength as we unite together stronger as a community. 

The feet of the swan – Jo James, 2017
Jo James is the lead nurse for dementia at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. In her talk she shares her experience of working with healthcare support workers who are undervalued in many places. Jo highlights the potential for improving patient care and increasing staff fulfilment by reducing the hierarchical nature of healthcare and allowing healthcare support workers to get the recognition they deserve.
Watch here…

Good doctor, bad patient – Aaron Brown, 2018
Aaron Brown was the first person with Cystic Fibrosis to qualify and join the Royal College of Surgeons just two years after medical school, a self described perfectionist was never one to let a disability stop him on excelling in life. That was until 2018 when he was confronted with saying goodbye to his children as his condition led him to become gravely ill in intensive care. Faced with this new perspective Aaron shares a deeply personal reflection on being a good doctor but bad patient and how we must consider our own health to also help our patients.
Watch here…

New ideas for old concerns – Derek Prinsley, 2016
Derek Prinsley qualified as doctor in 1942, before the NHS had formed and during WWII. When asked what he remembered of the birth of the NHS, he replied that he didn’t notice it, he was too busy doing the job. The biggest healthcare policy ever to have been enacted in modern Britain went unnoticed by one of its foot soldiers. In his TEDxNHS talk Derek Prinsley shares his reflections of healthcare as a medic in the early days of the NHS. Some of these are unimaginable in our currently industry; the stealthy swapping of hospitals, and others remain unchanged; if you put up a bed, somebody will come lie in it.
Watch here…

Four words – Hannah Thornton, 2018
‘Hello, I see you’ just four works to create a happier and healthy nation. Hannah Thornton shares her story of  being confronted with feelings of isolation at university and how a chance meeting on a train lead her to go viral through harnessing the power of connection. Hannah gives insight into the UK being the loneliness capital of Europe and how she is determined to challenge this one connection at a time.
Watch here…

What’s the most under-utilised resource in Healthcare? – Michael Seres, 2018
When Michael Seres went into theatre to become the 11th person in the UK to receive a total bowel transplant, he knew that 5 of the 10 patients before him had not survived their transplant. Whilst thrilled to be recovering in a hospital bed, Michael noticed that his new ostomy bag was frequently leaking or overflowing. So he went online and learnt how to hack his health. In his TEDxNHS talk, Michael shares his experience of using technology and community to enhance the medicine which he has been so grateful for and which had saved his life. He demonstrates that as the patient in this scenario, he was an underutilised resource.
Watch here…

We have been reflecting on the ‘power of a pause’ and how in such uncertain times a moment to pause can help create space to build strength, build resilience and keep hope.

Here are some TEDxNHS talks to…
provide a moment of pause. 

Why I would prescribe digital sleep medicine for the NHS –  Sophie Bostock, 2016
When Sophie was four years old she wanted to be Superman but when Father Christmas gave her a Supergirl outfit she knew life was about adapting. In her thought-provoking talk Sophie, who has a PhD in Health Psychology, explores the power of adapting to use digital technology to support mental wellbeing. She shares with the audience a clinically proven programme called ‘Sleepio’ which helps overcome even long term poor sleep.  NHS England has partnered with Sleepio to protect the mental health of NHS staff by offering Sleepio and Daylight at no cost throughout the pandemic. 
Watch here…

Medicine and Mars – Beth Healey, 2017
Meet the doctor who braved life in the remotest Antarctica in the name of space and medical exploration.  Beth Healey spent more than a year on the ultra-remote Concordia base as the European Space Agency’s research doctor.  She thinks outside the box and in helping develop space research; also thinks about how to apply the impossible to possible in healthcare.
Watch here…

These shoes were made for walking – Matt King, 2017
Matt King OBE is a leading inspirational speaker, author, lawyer, adventurer and mentor. When Matt was 16 he thought his dreams of becoming a professional rugby player were coming true when he was signed to play semi-professionally for the London Broncos. In the first 20 seconds of his first match his life changed forever when a tackle went wrong, and he was left paralyzed from the neck down. Matt talks about the hardship he faced and the darkness it brought, but also how he reimagined a new future for himself by taking back control and focusing on the things he did have in life instead of what was broken.  
Watch here…

Those excluded understand inclusion, like no other – Molly Watt, 2017
Molly Watt born without hearing and later diagnosed with Usher syndrome, resulting in her being registered deafblind, explores the notion of whether you are ever fully seen by society. Company Director and co-founder of Molly Watt Trust charity and now international Ambassador/Advocate she shares her drive of living with her diagnosis, embracing technology to find her place in the world around her.
Watch here…

Hand-me-down healthcare – Nick Harding, 2017
Nick Harding with a compelling vision ‘ Healthcare without boundaries’, brings to the stage his grandfather’s original doctors bag and invites us to learn from and not settle for what has gone before. With his questioning mind Nick shares his passion for creating a sustainable future in healthcare.
Watch here…

Here are some TEDxNHS talks that we hope will spread some joy and make you smile in these challenging times. 

Breathe Magic – Yvonne Farquarson and Richard McDougall, 2016
Breathe is an intensive therapy programme for young people with brain injury.  Recognising that the therapy for children with specific conditions involved repetitive and not wholly successful approaches, they looked for a different way to offer therapy that was fun and engaging.  The programme offers the same exercises as traditional approaches but appeals to the motivation of children and is life-changing.  
Watch here…

Magic performance – Breath Magic, 2017
Breath Magic returned the TEDxNHS stage the following year to demonstrate, share and inspire with their act.
Watch here…

Spoken word performance – Molly Case, 2016
Nurse and Poet, warrior and anxious, inspired to become a nurse after being unwell as a child but also had dreams of being a poet. Struggled with marrying the two together. But can now do both – both offer calm and quiet.
Watch here…

See one, do one, teach one – Keith Grimes, 2016
GP and digital innovators, how can we be brave enough and have the courage to test new things and innovate for the benefit of patients. how can we use virtual reality and augmented reality to help patients with LTCs, pain management, using technology to improve care.
Watch here…

On our doorstep – Jackie Marshall, 2018
Jackie is an NHS nurse with a side hustle as a volunteer in refugee camps in Northern France. After seeing the harrowing images in the media of young and desperate people washed up on European beaches Jackie followed her instincts to help and found herself giving basic first aid to refugees in what was then known as ‘the Jungle’. In her TEDxNHS talk Jackie describes her experiences in France and shares how these have influenced her practice as a nurse in the NHS. She reflects that compassion is something we can all give. You don’t need a medical or nursing degree to care. Sometimes, it’s just about throwing someone a rugby ball.
Watch here…

Charlotte Hall, the Curation Lead from TEDxNHS 2019, shares her reflections on being part of the community.

TED, the global community that brings together the world’s leading thinkers to share ideas, created TEDx, a programme of local, volunteer-led events that bring together people to share a TED-like experience – and so TEDxNHS was born.

TEDxNHS is an event for our people, organised by our people.

It is an event whose conception was about helping our people to reflect upon the wonderful things they do every day as a part of our NHS. Every member of the TEDxNHS organising team applied for their role in a voluntary capacity over and above their existing NHS job. In a time when we see our NHS stretched far beyond its capacity, this in itself is a testament to the ethos of TEDxNHS and to the people within our system that go above and beyond every day to make a difference.

At the start of last year, as the 2019 organising team, we sat in a room to try to decide the story that we wanted to tell, what messages were important to us and what we wanted to say through the platform of TED. I for one could not have even imagined at that point exactly what that platform could do, or the power of TEDxNHS.

We spoke for hours. We spoke about our people, the value of our people and the importance in our people knowing their value. We wanted to recognise the importance of a positive workplace culture, of compassionate leadership, of psychological safety and protected mental wellbeing for our staff. We wanted to talk about the very big difference that the small things can make in the delivery of quality patient care, to challenge hierarchy and to celebrate the wonderful gift that is our National Health Service.

We also spoke a lot about equality and equity and the importance of levelling the playing field for those that face discrimination in our society.

So many areas of society were discussed, so many personal stories and experiences of discrimination. As a team we were unbelievably passionate about inclusion and fairness and understanding things from as many different perspectives as possible. We wanted to stand up for those who aren’t treated with these values and ask the question, why?

Finally we spoke about thinking differently, about innovation, about improving things for the patients we are here to serve. We spoke about the importance of disrupting norms, challenging the status quo, the importance of ideas. But not only the importance of ideas, the importance of spreading ideas, sharing knowledge and working together for a better future.

And so we developed our three themes – Open Hearts: A celebration of workforce, exploring wellbeing and culture; Progressive Steps: A journey to explore equity and equality to shape our health system for the better; and Divergent Thoughts: A platform for innovation, spreading ideas and disrupting norms through sharing knowledge.

Ultimately the thing that came most from our discussion was that we have 1.5million amazing individuals in our NHS. We began to imagine what might happen if we were to all come together to consider the topics we had been discussing. We began to consider the unbelievable power that we would have if we were greater than the sum of our parts. This is where the dream began for a small group of us, in a small boardroom one evening in London, to inspire our system to consider what we could achieve by working ‘Beyond our Component Parts’.

Almost a year later, I couldn’t have imagined how inspirational that journey would be.

I was fortunate enough to be given the role of Head of Curation and I can honestly say it was one of the best experiences of my life. As a curation team we sifted through hundreds of applications, humbled and heart-warmed by the incredible amount of amazing stories we read. How were we ever going to choose? Several rounds of elimination, interviews and discussion later we finally had our fifteen. And what an amazing group of individuals those people turned out to be.

As a team we felt honoured to be able to get to know them, to not only work with them but to share the depths of their incredibly personal experiences to help them to curate their talks. On average it takes 300 hours to curate a TED talk and across the team we spent a huge amount of time coaching and investing our own emotions into these stories. Just one of the many huge personal benefits to being a part of this journey was the relationships that were developed during this process.

To stand by the side of the TEDxNHS stage and watch people that I now cared so deeply about tell their stories, in words we had so carefully considered, and witness the reaction of the thousands of people watching was nothing short of awe-inspiring. With 1,200 people in the room and thousands more livestreaming, we trended number 6 in the UK on Twitter with almost 25 million impressions. The only thing I could really think was that if even one of those people was now to think differently about one of the topics our fabulous speakers had tackled then we had just done something worthwhile.

And what did I learn?

Beside the incredible leadership journey I had just been on, the amazing developmental experience that TEDxNHS offered for my 2019, the friendships I had built and the stories I had heard, what had I learnt?

I had learnt about the power of a social movement, the power of communication in the spread of an idea and the power of human emotion.

Working for an Academic Health Science Network I know how hard the spread and adoption of innovation is. We know that on average it takes 17 year to get an innovation adopted. We understand the barriers and the cultural challenges.

But if we go back to where our thought journey began, if I reflect on what I have been taught by the power of TEDxNHS, standing by that stage, witnessing the social movement we had created by going beyond our component parts, it is easy to see that it is our people that are the key. And how do we reach our people?

Nothing will ever be more powerful than the human-to-human story.

Our psychology as human beings, the emotion in how we communicate ideas, this is what starts a social movement and inspires large- scale change. It is our people that are the component parts and coming together is the only way we will ever be able to go beyond them.

This post first appeared on the Innovation Agency website.

On the back of the first TEDxNHS launch party, one of our co-organisers, Anthony James shares his reflections on the evening.

Families are important to us all, they are rich, diverse and evolving, with no two being quite the same. Over time our families might shift and change, but the need for connection between individuals remains constant. Beyond the legal or genetic bonds we might share, the essence of a family is in the provision of emotional and spiritual kinship through a combination of:

• Shared values, beliefs and traditions
• Common experiences and activities
• Unconditional, non-judgemental support

Building a family takes energy, commitment and time. Energy to build the memories and foundations that are the heart of any family, commitment to make sure these foundations stay strong and time to allow family values and rituals to develop amongst a group. Whilst sometimes difficult, the result of a successful family is a sense of belonging, purpose and being a part of something greater than oneself.

Our first launch party…

This week at TEDxNHS we held our first official launch party, supported by one of our partners DrDoctor and hosted at Oasis Farm Waterloo, an urban farm and a flourishing community resource. We welcomed over 100 people, including team members, speakers (past and present), partners, long-term supporters and special guests to celebrate TEDxNHS and our journey so far.

As well as a celebration, the launch party provided us with a chance to thank the team for their hard work and progress, to thank our partners and supporters for their involvement and to introduce a new group of guests to the aims and values of TEDxNHS. Perhaps most importantly our launch party marked the announcement of our 2019 cohort of speakers, welcoming them into the world of TEDxNHS and providing a snapshot of what to expect at the main event through a selection of talks highlighting the growth and ambition of the brand.

Over the course of the evening we heard from:

• Allegra Chatterjee, Anthony James, Ayse Gungor & Shane Costigan – TEDxNHS 2019 co-organisers
• Tom Whicher – Founder of DrDoctor
• Jackie Marshall – Oncology nurse and TEDxNHS 2018 speaker
• Sheena Visram – TEDxNHS 2017 Co-Organiser
• Manpreet Bains – TEDxNHS founder

No longer an aim, but an achievement…

Our aim at TEDxNHS has always been to build a family across health and social care – sharing ideas, learning and empowering staff and service users to affect change, no matter their role or seniority. Hearing from our speakers and talking with our guests, what our launch party showed me was that this is no longer just an aim, but an achievement – we have built a family. Within our core team alone this year we have experienced joy and sadness, health and illness, births, weddings and the passing of loved ones. We have supported one another, learnt from each other and worked together to create a growing movement that is always welcoming of new ideas and perspectives.

At times the process of organising TEDxNHS can be all-consuming, as many of the team’s loved ones will attest to. Could this be in any way better illustrated than by the fact that we managed to arrange the launch party on the same date as my husband, Ben and my fellow co-organiser, Shane’s fiancé Imogen’s birthdays. Despite this oversight, which I heard plenty about before the party, on the actual evening it was truly special to share such a mix of celebrations; with many of the team’s friends and families being introduced to what TEDxNHS is about and us being able to thank these other vital figures in the extended TEDxNHS family.

A growing family…

As we head towards the main event in October, we will continue to expand our family, welcoming over 1000 guests from across the UK to connect and join us. As our growth continues, we are entering an important new chapter in the TEDxNHS journey. One which will take TEDxNHS beyond a single event and build on the momentum and energy that our speakers, team and audience bring with them to think differently, dream bigger and design better for the population we serve. This next step relies on the continued support of our family, so take a look at our new Family Handbook to see how you can join the journey.

I look forward to seeing you at the main event!

Anthony James

TEDxNHS Co-Organiser

TEDxNHS 2019 – ‘Beyond Our Component Parts’ will take place on Friday 4 October at indigo at The O2.

Click here to get your tickets now!

In the first of our blog series for 2019, read more from one of our fantastic co- organisers, Anthony James, as he shares his story and passion for TEDxNHS…

Mr George McGrath is born in Glasgow in 1937. At the age of 10, he moves to Northern Ireland, where he later meets his wife Freda. They both train as nurses, George working in mental health, Freda in palliative care. They have 3 daughters, Sharon (who now works in a GP surgery), Lyn and Rhonda (who also becomes a nurse) and later 5 grandchildren – Anthony, Craig, Leanne, Cara and Sean. George’s career goes from strength to strength, they move around the UK and eventually, he finds himself as director of nurse education at Dundee University. The years go by, George retires and takes up diving alongside learning Spanish, enjoying the freedom of his later years.

Then everything changes, George develops a cough, his weight begins to drop and following a CT scan and other tests he is diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer most often associated with asbestos exposure. Incurable, George’s health deteriorates fast, the energetic, inquisitive, life-long learner reduced and weakened. As the end approaches, family gather at George’s home and later a hospice, the same hospice where Freda had worked as a nurse several years ago. George passes away peacefully on 15 June 2004 aged 67 surrounded by his loved ones. His funeral is a packed-out occasion, filled with friends and former colleagues from hospitals and the university.

Their stories helped him on his journey to wanting to become a doctor

A couple of years later George’s grandson, Anthony sits in front of a panel at a medical school interview. He tells the panel all about George and Freda and how their stories helped him on his journey to wanting to become a doctor. A few weeks later an offer letter arrives and several years later he graduates. Photographs arrive of Anthony in a gown and mortarboard and take pride of place next to similar shots of his Dad and George dressed in theirs. A few weeks later Anthony takes his first steps onto the ward as a junior doctor and he thinks of George.

……………..

The NHS flows through all our lives: a place of work, a place to heal or a setting for many of life’s most joyous and most difficult moments. Uniting all of this are people, from patients, to nurses, to managers, people, who together create the unique system that is the NHS. Each of these people has a story, an experience to share or wisdom to impart, with their diversity of background, thought and ideas being one of healthcare’s greatest assets.

The NHS flow through all our lives

Recognising these stories and this diversity has always been at the forefront of our minds at TEDxNHS. We strive to showcase the stories of everyday frontline staff and patients, in the knowledge that anyone can have an extraordinary idea and anyone can become a storyteller on a national stage. By doing so we hope to engage and motivate the people who shape our NHS, to think big, be brave and act bold in the pursuit of the delivery of ever-improving standards of care.

This year’s theme, ‘Beyond Our Component Parts’ recognises the value of people and hopes to explore this through 3 topics. Open Hearts – a celebration of our workforce, culture and people. Divergent Thoughts – A platform for innovation, the spread of ideas and knowledge and Progressive Steps – A journey to embrace change and shape our health system for the better.

NHS has many faces and represents something different to each of us

The NHS has many faces and represents something different to each of us. To me, it is my friends, my family and my patients and is about much more than the simple provision of health services. Planning for this year’s TEDxNHS has made me reflect on my relationship with the NHS. I think back to all the people I have met through the NHS, everything I have learned and the hopes I have for its future. I also think about George, my grandad and what story he would have chosen to share on that stage.

Save the date: Friday 4 October at indigo at The O2 as we celebrate the people and the stories that make our NHS

Anthony James

TEDxNHS 2019 Co-Organiser

Sheena Visram reflects on her experiences choreographing TEDxNHS 2017 in her building partnerships and socialising healthcare.

Storytelling and spoken word help ideas worth sharing come to life. With this knowledge, I think back to my invitation to organise and curate TEDxNHS 2017, Inspired by People, with a sense of warmth and gratitude.

TEDxNHS is an event for NHS workers. The organising team is made up of NHS staff most often on fellowships across FMLM, Darzi and GMTS, with many trainees and mid-level managers collectively seeking to develop experiential leadership opportunities. Each year sees a fresh team of around 25 people, with a new signature reflecting the diversity of that team.

The mission has been and remains clear: there are amazing people in the NHS with inspirational stories and aspirational ideas. We want to bring these people together once a year to share their stories on a national stage, so we leave inspired to think differently, dream bigger and design better for the population we serve. As I think back, the opportunity to elevate an array of unheard voices to the national stage was such a privilege, there is no doubt that this needs to be a priority.

The topics covered so far have been:

Rising to the challenge
Empowering the mind
Embracing the unknown

As a team at TEDxNHS we forged a brilliant working dynamic and collective voice that I am keen to preserve. This was my greatest joy and so I’d like to share some learning from the experience of relinquishing hierarchy, distributed teams and collective resilience.

Leave hierarchy at the door

TEDx events are heavily curated in their design. As a prerequisite the audience and collection of speakers were mapped to represent a diverse cross section of the workforce. Nancy Kline is well quoted in saying that, even in a hierarchy people can be equal as thinkers. We chose to demonstrate that by setting the right climate, so that people could be equal to become the doers and the faces of their successes. This opened up a new dialogue around some of the most prominent NHS topics.

Many individuals snapped out of traditional rank and hierarchy based environments when stepping into the TEDxNHS arena.

The way we work is changing. We operated as a distributed team with a shared purpose, vision and a mission we had chosen to accept. It was about a collective drive. This meant that we were connected through technologies like SLACK, a schedule of remote conference calls and rehearsals.

It is worth saying that no part of this worked to perfection. We learnt everyday through the process and we vocalised permission to do so. As roles and responsibilities carved themselves out, we experimented with different ways of working and this formed part of the legacy handed over to the new team. My greatest thanks to the team was a lesson in collective resilience. It is fair to say that after six months of working together, there was an innate sense of connectedness across the team, many of whom did not meet until the event itself.

I believe that collectively we can be resilient.

The ability to become independently more resilient is one thing, but the collective resilience and elasticity within a team is another. The opportunity to understand one another came through an openness to listen, understand stressors and behaviours. I developed the most through opening up to the challenges posed and so much of this is thanks to our beautifully democratic co-organiser, Pablo, whose strength sat in canvassing a broad cross section of ideas.

In parallel, the partnerships between the individual curators on the team and speakers were characterized by trust, honesty and openness – there was no rule book to this. It became intuitive and was based upon a shared belief in each idea was worth sharing on a national stage.

Now to the day itself!

It was one filled with emotion and marked by authenticity. I sat stage-side in perhaps the best seat in the auditorium – watching the choreography of the day unfold through the reactions of the audience.

Each story told a compelling tale. I was humbled by the outward shows of respect. By example, in feet of a swan, a senior nurse proudly advocated for junior members of her team, describing herself as the majestic swan, sliding across the surface and driven by the relentless commitment from those feet below her, rarely seen or heard – this was her moment to change that dynamic. She glowed in doing so.

Mental health was also a popular topic on the day, encasing vulnerability, self-care and Kinsugi. A police sergeant bravely challenged perceptions to mental health through the Japanese art form of Kinsugi. In western societies, broken objects are often thrown away and readily replaced. In Japanese culture, if a jar breaks, the pieces are collected and glued back together. Gold is used to repair the broken item, meaning the object holds more value through the break. He challenged us all to break well and celebrate the cracks.

The choreography of the day ran a golden thread through the power of lived experiences and self-realisation. The voice of patients, parents, healthcare professionals, put on a display of spoken word, musicality and performance, showcasing innovation, design and a greater sense of purpose. This was interwoven with advocacy on behaviours and a responsibility to celebrate one another.

This blog was first published as part of the Q Community in London. July 2018