Yesterday was a
Red Letter Day, well, possibly like me you received
lots of cards largely red cards sent in red envelopes, perhaps accompanied by
red flowers, red wrapped heart shaped chocolates and rosé wine (don’t know why
its rosé and not red). Yes it was
Valentine’s Day 2015. Valentines cards have
been sent since 1477, but it’s a day whose origins are earlier, and most likely
comes from the ancient annual
Roman festival known as
Lupercalia. During this
festival, men would strip naked and run through the streets swatting young
maidens with dog or goat skins whips – apparently this was said to increase the
young ladies fertility.
It all sounds like the inspiration
for the story line in the best selling book
Fifty Shades of Grey. The film adaptation
of the book was released yesterday (see the official trailer
here) and has sparked mixed reactions. The
Forbes review appeared
to some up a fairly representative view –
‘for a film that’s supposed to be about the collision
between deep emotional need and raw human sexuality, it is cold and clinical to
the point of feeling sterile in everything from aesthetics to characterisation’
– not the most encouraging endorsement.
The London Fire Brigade response
was a great deal more pragmatic. They have reported a steady increase
in people getting stuck in handcuffs since the book was published and are worried
that the release of the film yesterday might lead to more people getting into
equally tricky situations. They have started a campaign called
Fifty Shades of
Red aimed at ensuring people don’t get into compromising situations when trying
to emulate scenes from the film. It’s certainly a public health message with a difference.
During Wednesday and Thursday last week
I also got to hear of a different public health message from a group of people
whose energy and creativity truly inspired me. I was at the Village Hotel,
Bury, (which didn't inspire me at all) with 150 people, drawn from Executive Teams and Non-Executive
Teams of NHS Hospitals, Community Trusts, and Clinical Commissioning Groups
from across the North West all intent on learning how to make Safety Visible. This
was the first action learning event in a year long initiative paid for by the Health
Foundation.
The Health Foundation is an independent
charity whose work aims to improve the quality of health care in the
UK. Every
year they give up to £18m to fund health care research, fellowships and
improvement projects across the UK – all which are focused upon improving
healthcare quality. They are funded through an endowment fund (currently valued
at £820m) which came from a one off chartable donation of £560m from the sale
of the
PPP Health Care Group in 1998. It has been said this was one of the largest
single charitable donations in UK history.
The event was organised by
Haelo.
Haelo is an innovation and improvement centre which host experts, clinicians
and improvement fellows. It’s supported by
Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust,
Salford Clinical Commissioning Group and
Salford City Council. I have been involved
with it since its inception and along with other colleagues from the
University
of Salford it’s been great to be part of an initiative aiming to improve the
population health and health care for the people of
Salford.
For me the Making Safety Visible event
was very interesting because of the journey of change we appeared to take. Day One, harm (patient harm) was conceptualised mainly by such
things as pressure ulcers, hospital acquired infections, avoidable deaths and
so on. By the end of the two days harm was also being thought of in terms
of population health (obesity, smoking cessation, promoting good mental health and
well being and so on). And in organisations that often are confrontational in their relationships with each other, there was
a change in perception over the positive nature of what could be achieved by working together. We seemed
to reach a slightly more equal relationship than that perhaps portrayed in Fifty
Shades of Grey. However, like Valentine Day, time will tell if these changes survive or
not.
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