Pathway to Excellence: The St James's Story

It is a lot of work, but it's not about the submission.

You know, you can have excellent documentation, but it's about the, as Charlotte said, it's about the survey, it's about the staff feedback, 'cause it needs to align to tell the real story of what's happening on the ground.

The next bit was the survey, and I think that give me the most heebie-jeebies.

Yeah.

How on earth are we going to get the required uptake? How are we going to, you know, to, to get people to do it? And, and as you say, those trolleys, you, [laughs] they certainly got-

Yeah

... attention wheeling them around anyway.

Oh.

I had inflatable dolls and there was all sorts of things.

[laughs]

Pirate ships.

I can't remember what else was on them-

Yeah

...

but they were, they definitely grabbed people's attention and, you know, it was like, I don't know how you found doing the survey, but, like, we got 76% uptake, which was huge.

And Sharon, just coming back to yourself, and for both of you, I'm sure there was difficult moments.

So was there ever a time, Sharon, when you felt, "I'm not sure this is gonna work," or, you know, "This is just too hard," or was there ever those challenging moments, and how did you overcome them?

Um, I think it's fair to say there was.

There, there certainly was, and I have to be honest about it.

But as we know, any large scale change that involves people, there is going to be times where it's going to dip and everything.

But we were very, very clear in our purpose.

We were very, very clear in our vision and our end game.

And I do need to say that we did have the support of our American colleagues from Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

You know, so if there was any sort of a dip with us, they kept on encouraging us, us.

And together as a team, you know, everybody kept on encouraging each other and everything like that.