15s30m workshops gone virtual
Early May time I was speaking to my favourite NHSI coach Ann Hill about 15s30m, she had recently just moved to another NHS QI role with NHS England and we had a brief chat about how awesome 15s30m is and how it could definitely benefit staff everywhere, especially in regards to wellbeing.
Ann had already arranged a meeting with some of her team to see how this could move forward. I then was invited to come along to a couple of discussions and share my experiences of 15s30m with them. There was a really amusing part of the call where one of the participant’s partners had just walked in the house with Brie and Ice Cream as a treat to which we all had a bit of a laugh.
At the end of this call we decided to try out a virtual 15s30m workshop for the rest of the team to which I was extremely excited to facilitate. I was apprehensive about how it would work and if it would have the same impact as a “normal” workshop.
Planning for the session, I just used the slides I normally would which are on the 15s30m website and thought about how the group scenarios could work using a digital platform.
The day came for the session to be held and everyone turned up (great start!) I was really nervous about the technology letting us down, but luckily it all went really well.
I used the chat facility in MS teams to carry out the “why do I work in healthcare?” exercise, for each question I gave them 45 seconds to enter their answers into the chat, some of the feedback was really positive, for example; “allowed me to reflect individually without pressure” and “great to reconnect with why I am here, too busy normally to even think about this” some of the feedback to the questions were really great and it was so good to give everyone an opportunity to look at, reflect and share what was being said.
The mood was very relaxed and everyone had the freedom to speak when they wanted (by raising their virtual hands, or writing in the chat box)
Since the festival in November, any workshops I have done I now use the line of commitment to commit to missions, it is great for the group to hold one another to account and form a mini support network. I have found it works an absolute treat! I thought, let’s try this digitally, and wow it worked so well. My wife, sat in the other room could hear everyone cheering and clapping for each other’s missions (even with headphones on!) So much energy, which I thought wouldn’t be possible when you aren’t all in a room together.
From this session we had lots of 15s30m heroes and lots of joy. My nerves about using digital tech to run a 15s30m workshop were combatted and I will definitely be doing it again and would highly recommend anyone else who was planning a session prior to Covid and put it on hold, to try this, it’s amazing and still has the impact required to create an army of superheroes!
Gary Mudge
is the Improvement Practice Facilitator at Livewell Southwest. Gary is one of the original 15s30m heroes after seeing some posts on the 15s30m twitter account in our first year of launching. Gary wanted to run a workshop, so simply downloaded the materials off the website, rang Dan with a quick query and off he went! Gary has been enabling people to launch 15 second missions ever since and is one of the very few with a special reCOGnition award for his contributions! #15s30mLegend
