by Alexandrien Van Der Burgt-Franken
This update of the Pilot in The Radboud Medical Centre is about sessions, methods and cases used from the (translated) GoodWork Toolkit and about our first experiences.
Yolande Witman and Alexandrien worked with three groups: medical heads of clinical departments , residentsphysician, nursing managers and nurse practitioners, 18 persons in sum.
With each group we held four sessions, planned in the period April – July 2011.
Session 1 ‘Good Work’ We started with an interview of the professionals with each other about the question: What makes you a good professional? After that we gave an introduction about the concept of Good Work. Then we asked them to give their opinion about GoodWork of other professions in cases from the toolkit. The professionals thought about criteria of good work of their own profession. We finished the first session with the value sort cards from the toolkit by each participant. In the last session we will do this again and we are curious if there will be any differences.
Session 2 ‘Excellence’:
We asked every participant to bring along something regarding to what they see as an example of excellent work. We also discussed the case of Alfred Bloom and the decisions that he made. We asked them to think about excellence and the relation with ethics. For this purpose we used the case about Ethical Values in Business. After discussing this case we asked them to bring up examples of excellence from their own working experience. That resulted in all groups in inspiring stories, which illustrated the commitment of these professionals with their work.
Session 3 ‘Ethics’ This session started with a reflection about the responsibilities in daily practice and their influence on the work of the participators. We discussed the case ’ serving a cause versus serving a client’. To conclude, the participants told stories regarding the moral dilemmas they face in their work. Emotional stories with regard to very difficult dilemmas occurred.
Session 4 ‘Engagement’. We started this session with an interview about personal engagement. Is this important in work and for the patient? How do you want to be a mentor for others? We discussed a case of the toolkit about mentorship, and after that we had a dialogue about their own experiences with mentors. What would you learn to others? What would you change in your work? They finished with filling in the value sort cards for the second time.
In June the medical staff and the organization decided that also a group of 8 enthusiastic medical students may participate in this pilot. In August and September we scheduled four sessions with them. Some of them are involved in de movement Compassion for Care.
Next week we will analyze the outcomes and prepare the next joint meeting in September. In October, the groups will exchange their conception and awareness. The results will be presented to the board of the Medical Centre and the rest of the organization.
Yolande and Alexandrien are leading the sessions. Their first impression is that there are different points of views within the groups, this makes the dialogue useful. The differences itself are not the most interesting aspect; the possibility to exchange professional and personal experiences in an open and safe atmosphere makes it very valuable for the professionals.
The toolkit offered us good material, for all four sessions. The toolkit is developed for students, so we changed some exercises to make them more suitable for our senior participants. Because of limited time for each session, we made choices which parts we used. We also think that we have to ‘translate’ some cases to more visible for the Dutch situation. Finally we discovered in practice the importance of Good Work and the GoodWork Toolkit
Before we started to work on this pilot, we knew the GoodWork Project from the chapter Gardner et. al. wrote in the book ‘Professional Pride’. The GoodWork Project provides values of which we believe are very important. This pilot made us see that we are ready to work with the GoodWork Toolkit. The Professional Honor Foundation want to make work of it in different sectors in the Netherlands. Working with professionals and discussing their work shows the importance of finding the right ‘language’ for Good Work. The cases of the participants confirm the importance of trust towards professionals.
Stay tuned-In September we tell you more about the results of the plenary session and the results in the University Medical Centre in Nijmegen.