Ready to Act: interim report on implementation and recommendations

6. Last word …

To finish, a test of change Ready to Act poem, by Catriona Black, speech and language therapist, NHS Lothian.

Once upon a time in Edinburgh West
There was a team of speech therapists doing their best
But Ready to Act said "go make a change"
Think of new ways, nothing is too strange
Meetings about meetings immediately were had
New words became normal, although some thought them mad!
Requests for Assistance replaced the referral
5 new ambitions were learned – forget at your peril
So I was dispatched to DLE to start to think...
Who I am, how I learn, how I lead and make a link
Between where we have been, where we are and where next
Without leaving the team feeling horribly vexed.
I'd a project to do and had to know how
Where to start, how to measure and what to do now
Julia taught us lots of QI methods to use:
Fishbones, driver diagrams and others to chose
Un-necessary appointments was a problem in the west
Could we send fewer out, do something else with the rest?
Did we need to see all of them no matter the worry?
Cramming them in, giving advice in a hurry.
To cut a long "test of change" story much shorter
We found our processes not actually cast in mortar
We introduced triage, language drop ins and more
And the number we discharged at first appointments hit the floor.
My poster will show you much more about how
We achieved what we did and how it looks now
We've stopped seeing so many families just to send them away
Or who actually weren't right for us at the end of the day.
Advice is more timely and quite locally found
And we have all of the info for decisions most sound
SLTs have more time for other work to be done
We'll always move forward whilst keeping things fun!