On the 15th of November 2019 the fourth meeting of SYNERGY, the Caribbean Network of Leadership in Healthcare will be held on St. Maarten.
The meeting is organised in cooperation with Sint Maarten Medical Centre. Main topic this time is Prevention. Keynote speaker will be Eric Gertner, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of South Florida, Morsani School of Medicine in Tampa, Florida. More information can be found the SYNERGY website.
Emergence; a swarm of starlings
Besides audit, coaching and training I have been active in research. My research started around 2005, when I wanted to know more about the effects of the phenomenon accreditation. That led to the doctoral thesis Certification, Accreditation and the Professional and to my PhD at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in 2009. Certification and accreditation often do not support the establishment of a quality culture, but what does? A few years later in 2013, working in Ghana, and trying to support the creation of a quality culture in a healthcare institute, I started wondering if one could actually plan such an achievement. I started questioning the PDCA-cycle, the holy grail of quality management, wherein planning and goal setting are crucial elements. My ideas got some recommendations, but much resistance. However, can we create an innovation or e.g. a quality culture? At least I found that there is no one way, there is not one best solution. A solution fit for Europe can be different from the one in Africa or the Caribbean as I wrote in Quality Progress. What the best solution is, depends on the context. And each context has its own mindset. Together with Dutch colleagues from the Dutch Academy for Quality we held a dialogue, initiated by Huub Vinkenburg on the schools or paradigms of quality. That brought prof.dr.ing. T.W. Hardjono and me to four paradigms. We explored them in our 2019 article Twenty First Century TQM: the Emergence Paradigm in TQM Journal. Spring next year our book on the subject will be published in English by de GoudseSchool. Especially the Emergence Paradigm triggers me. We see it in a swarm of starlings or the creation of an ant hill. But, also innovations (novelty) often occur, especially in complex environments, when it is not planned, not expected and unpredictable. I decided to do a concept analysis on the concept of emergence, that is recently published. I am still on the journey and intend to explore the concept further. For now, it at least helps me to reflect on the nature of organisational change.
Anyone who wants to contribute is welcome.
The White and Yellow Cross Care Foundation (WYCCF) choose for Trusted Care as its motto. Besides Trust, the letters of the word CARE stand for Client centricity, Attentiveness, Respect and Empathy. To make the motto more active Everard van Kemenade will conduct a three day training in November for all staff members working at Sint Martin’s Home on Person Centred Care and Passion.
Part of Person Centred Care of course is knowing your resident. For that purpose and as a preparation for this training a Guideline Life Story is written helping to describe the resident’s life story. The guideline will be further developed and put into practice starting from the training. Research has shown that life stories increased empathy, deepened relationships with patients, and led participants to feel more satisfied in their role as providers. The stories were considered useful for end-of-life discussions. Life stories incorporated into physician practice helped health care providers feel more connected to their patients and ultimately more satisfied in the care of nursing home patients (Qu et al. 2019). We will keep you posted on the effects of the Life Stories at Sint Martin’s Home.
Qu,J., Goldman, L. and Wilkinson, J (2019) Patients’ Life Stories in Bringing Meaning to Nursing Home Care, PRiMER. Vol 3: Issue 11. DOI: 10.22454/PRiMER.2019.181832
On Thursday August 29th my neighbour and world famous expert in lighting Wout van Bommel invited some friends living in his neighbourhood to visit the company his family is famous for: Van Bommel shoe Factory. Wout organised that his brother Frans (78 years years old, retired CEO of the company) gave us a tour through the history of the business and that he hosted a site visit. We were received generously with coffee and sweets, an introduction video (with safety precautions ! ) and a chat. The enthusiasm and passion of the former CEO was contageous. He showed us around, answered any question with pleasure and lectured on shoe manufacturing. Van Bommel is famous worldwide for their Quality. Timeless, expensive, sustainable shoes.
Interested in Quality, I was especially touched by the explanation and demonstration of the Goodyear method, wherein pitch wire is used to stitch the sole to the top. In 1869 Charles Goodyear patented his manufacturing machine that increased the longevity and sustainability of shoes. The procedure requires more skills, more time; but creates increased Quality. This, of course, also increases the price of the shoe. Frans van Bommel appeared to be a passionate ambassador of the method. And I became a Goodyear fan too.
Unfortunately, as he told us, most shoes are produced nowadays with cheaper ways of doing like the so called Blake method. Luckily Van Bommel keeps using the Goodyear stitch for (some of) their shoes. But it makes me sad to see how -again- Money wins from Quality…
The visit to the factory ended with a video presenting the history of the family company and the three sons of Frans, the 9th generation who run the business now. In the movie their grandfather, Jan van Bommel, appeared. In a hard time after WWII he spoke the memorable words: ’The days are tough, what do we have to do? Produce a cheaper product and abandon the name we have worked for so hard? What ever we did in the past would have been for nothing. We continue manufacturing our well known Quality product. The fame of our product needs to be sustained against any price’.
Let us listen to grandpa! As a customer I would be willing to pay more and wait nine weeks for my Quality shoes. And I am not the only one. Frans van Bommel told us that people in Africa who cannot afford to buy a car or a bike, but have to walk many miles a day, save money to be able to buy Goodyear method produced shoes. So, change push to pull, boys!!!
I learned a lot that afternoon, thanks to the Van Bommels.
