A big Boxing Day THANK YOU

It’s Boxing Day, and the year is rapidly coming to a close. In the nearly 12 years I have been writing and posting my blog on a Sunday, Boxing Day has only ever fallen on a Sunday once before, and that was in 2010. Strange. And yesterday was, of course, Christmas Day. I wonder what you did with the day. Some of you will have been working, looking after others, keeping us safe, keeping us warm, and for some, keeping us fed. If you were one of those folk, I want to say a big THANK YOU for being there for others in so many different ways. For J and I it was a quiet day, spent together, with Facetime and Zoom replacing family sitting around our Christmas table. For the second year running, Christmas plans have been disrupted, dreams left unfulfilled and people missed. As a consequence of the pandemic, some of those people will be missed forever. It has been a tough year once again for so many people.

This time last year I wrote in my blog that I hoped we could get the vaccination programme up and running asap. That hope came true and what a success the vaccination programme has been, in so many ways. A short while ago, I was privileged to go out with our School Nurses as they were vaccinating  12-15 year old children and young people. As I said at the time, it was compassionate care at its best. I was able to get both my initial jabs early on in the first wave of vaccinations and got my booster in early October. On a personal level it was a huge relief and I have become increasingly evangelical about encouraging others to get themselves vaccinated.   

I think we will be on a repeat vaccination programme for a few years to come – rather like the annual flu vaccination programme. Indeed, Israel and Germany have both approved a 4th ‘offensive booster’, to be given some 4 months after the original booster jab. The UK is still considering the data, or prevaricating as I prefer to think of it.

The present system of robbing Peter to pay Paul to carry out the vaccinations is not sustainable in the longer term, however. We need to develop an independent vaccination professional. A group of people ready and able to vaccinate on a rolling basis. That said, here is another big THANK YOU to all the current health and social care professionals, the army of volunteers, and the armed forces too, who have made it possible to get so many of us vaccinated. It is not the politicians we should thank for getting us this far, but folk like many of my readers who have gone above and beyond their normal work to get us vaccinated. And I’m willing to bet that many had to forgo the cheese and wine at the end of what would have been many a gruelling day.

Yesterday afternoon, after spending what was a non-gruelling Christmas Day, as J and I were nibbling away at the cheese, and sipping mulled wine, she asked me what my New Year’s resolutions were going to be. I didn’t really have an answer, so I looked back at my ‘end of year blog’ in 2020. 

There I found, not resolutions, but four ambitions for the year. I wanted to: (1) help improve the health and health outcomes for our communities (2) find ways to help reduce health inequalities (3) enhance the productivity of our health and care organisations (4) develop a stronger and more coherent partnership placed-based approach to how care is delivered.

When I wrote those words, I was a Non-Executive Director at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, and Vice-Chair at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals. In both communities, I had lots to go at. Little did I know then that I would have a different opportunity to take these ambitions forward. Very unpredictably, I was approached by a head-hunter company to see if I might be interested in a Chair’s position at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital is 60 miles away, or a 90-minute car journey. It wasn’t something I had thought about, but I was intrigued to find out more. Long story short, I put my hat in the ring and was really pleasantly surprised to be offered the post. I started on the 1st May, and the last 7 months have been amazing!

Of course, I have been very fortunate to be working with a great team of Executive and Non-Executive Directors and many of the folk I have met in both clinical and support services have been simply inspirational. Those ambitions, well now I have a fabulous team of people to work towards them with, and to do so with some brilliant partners. There are so many challenges to address, but in so doing, I have found it’s possible to create unlimited opportunities to make a difference every day.

So, 2021 might have been a difficult year for many of us, but there were glimmers, green shoots of hope for us to see. Last week I heard of one such ray of hope. It came from last week’s Wednesday’s BBC Woman’s Hour. I was on my way to deliver the last of our Christmas gifts to some of our family. It was a long journey, but made very bearable by listening to the absolutely delightful Susie Dent. If you need to get someone a birthday present this year, buy her book, Word Perfect; it is simply delightful. As well as being the TV show Countdown’s resident lexicographer, Susie is an accomplished etymologist and author, who knows the meaning of so many unusual words, which she shares with great humour. Right at the end, the Woman’s Hour presenter, Emma Barnett (an equally brilliant entertainer) asked Susie what word might describe how she herself was feeling that day. Susie’s word was ‘respair’. It is a 16th- century term meaning fresh hope, and a recovery from despair. She ‘discovered’ it in 2020, but in her words, ‘we need as much respair as we can get right now’.

Next week’s blog will be the first of 2022 – I want to say a final big THANK YOU to all those folk who week-on-week read my blog. Your kindness and support are much appreciated.