Inspiring day today. Senior Ministry of Health officials from eight countries (Mexico, Scotland, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia), plus technical partners, such as WHO, ISQua, Healthqual and others. What struck me most was that even though the room was so full of experts (heads of Quality Directorates, former State Ministers of Health, CEOs and senior staff, Don Berwick, etc), what a spirit of genuine curiosity, humility, and exploration there was in co-developing a National Quality Strategy framework to help guide countries in this difficult but critical process.
If you read my last post, you know my love-hate relationship to frameworks -- which, if ungrounded with reality, risk being irrelevant and academic at best, and misleading and simply wrong at worst.
That's why I was so excited by the experiment we ran today -- my first exposure to a "world café". In this format, we had senior representatives from five countries present on learnings from their experience developing and implementing a National Quality Strategy. Using posters set up around the conference room, smaller groups of 5-6 people rotated around at set time intervals to learn and discuss. After the 2.5 hours of around-the-world rotation, we then re-gathered in a larger group, discussed learnings with our table, and then shared insights with the larger group.
By the end of the morning, we had a set of insights that we then organized and used to test an emerging framework for development, implementing and sustaining a National Quality Strategy. And of course, what we learned was that one-size-fits-none, and elements like courage and compassion are just as important as the "hard" stuff like structures and metrics.
Lots of learnings to bring back home... where we'll continue to develop and refine our framework. It's a messy, gritty process... but what keeps me inspired is knowing this is so grounded in the realities on-the-ground -- and that hopefully through this work, we'll be saving lives and improving health and health care worldwide.
If you read my last post, you know my love-hate relationship to frameworks -- which, if ungrounded with reality, risk being irrelevant and academic at best, and misleading and simply wrong at worst.
That's why I was so excited by the experiment we ran today -- my first exposure to a "world café". In this format, we had senior representatives from five countries present on learnings from their experience developing and implementing a National Quality Strategy. Using posters set up around the conference room, smaller groups of 5-6 people rotated around at set time intervals to learn and discuss. After the 2.5 hours of around-the-world rotation, we then re-gathered in a larger group, discussed learnings with our table, and then shared insights with the larger group.
By the end of the morning, we had a set of insights that we then organized and used to test an emerging framework for development, implementing and sustaining a National Quality Strategy. And of course, what we learned was that one-size-fits-none, and elements like courage and compassion are just as important as the "hard" stuff like structures and metrics.
Lots of learnings to bring back home... where we'll continue to develop and refine our framework. It's a messy, gritty process... but what keeps me inspired is knowing this is so grounded in the realities on-the-ground -- and that hopefully through this work, we'll be saving lives and improving health and health care worldwide.
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