The First 500 - A report on London Deanery's Coaching ... - Mentoring

Lessons learned<strong>The</strong> first two years of the service have proceeded to plan and theservice has recruited and trained its full capacity of mentors whichhas kept pace with mentee applicants. A number of lessons werelearnt regarding what went well, and what requires improving thatwill guide the planning for the future.Planning ahead<strong>The</strong> transitional funding to support those affected by MTASprovided the opportunity to kickstart this programme. However,uncertainty over the availability of further funding made planningahead difficult. It is considered that funding for a minimum of threeyears is required to enable constructive forward planning.Keeping recordsCommunication between the Deanery mentoring team and thementors and mentees has mostly been via email and the website.<strong>The</strong> website contains a number of useful downloadable forms thatprovide a structure for contracting, recording sessions, reflectingand feeding back. Mentors are expected to sign and get thementee to sign, a brief record about the themes of the sessionand any action points agreed, and to return this to the mentoringoffice. This is important as it forms the basis for invoicing forthose mentors, e.g. GPs, who are self-employed and paid by theDeanery directly for their time. Retrieving this paperwork has notalways been easy and participants have expressed discomfort withreturning notes that may have sensitive information on them. Adecision has now been taken to exclude any record about themesand actions agreed. However mentor and mentee may keep thisanonymised information if jointly agreed as helpful in the process.Marketing<strong>The</strong> service was deliberately given a relatively soft launch, so asnot to create demand beyond capacity. After about 18 months itbecame clear that there were insufficient mentees for the numberof mentors trained, and marketing of the service was stepped up.Mailshots to trainee groups through their specialty schools, to newGPs through the Deanery database of recent trainees, throughtheir PCTs, the LMC, their trainers and programme directors andto new consultants via their medical directors have been effectivein increasing demand. For example a recent mailshot to a largecohort of new consultants, via the Deanery database, yielded over50 applications in a week.Data collection and analysisIn times of economic stringency services will be scrutinised closelyfor delivering value for money. It is vital that accurate records arekept on an electronic database to enable regular review and audit.Data collection and recording, including feedback and evaluation,should be an explicit responsibility in the job description ofadministrative staff.30London Deanery Coaching and Mentoring ServiceCommunicationsEffective communication, through an attractive user friendlywebsite, group emails and newsletters are essential. Support fromthe Deanery communications team made an important contributionto the success of the service. It was also important to have anumber of mentors who had high profile ‘day jobs’ and were ableto be influential ambassadors for the service.Future decisionsCentralised vs DevolvedBased on the size of London’s NHS, it would be reasonable to planfor the service to expand year on year for the foreseeable future,so that every doctor or dentist can access a mentor during timesof challenge or change. Although larger hospital trusts may beable to develop in-house services, based on similar principles it isviewed that a high quality service would be impossible to deliverfor the following reasons. <strong>First</strong>ly, it would be difficult to reassurementees on confidentiality and prevent prejudgement of issues bymentors. In addition, there is strong evidence that people benefit inbeing able to talk to someone outside their employing organisationand from a different specialty. This separation of function assiststhe mentor in remaining purely objective, concentrating on thementee’s story without their own experience prejudicing the issues.In addition, an outside perspective is often invaluable.<strong>The</strong>re are strong reasons for having a centrally organised servicesince this enables equity of provision, enables effective promotionof the service and minimises any negative influence from individualorganisations who may not perceive the benefits to their trust. Itpermits the service to be more responsive to change and take onnew roles such as focusing on leadership skills in coaching andmentoring. It enables quality improvements to be implementedwidely and consistently.TrainingIn the future it may be possible as medical and dental mentorsbecome more experienced and acquire recognised qualifications,to provide mentor training in house.Individual vs. Teams<strong>The</strong> coaching skills can be utilised in team building and teamcoaching. Current mentors would require little additional trainingto deliver this. <strong>The</strong> ultimate aim of mentoring is to improve patientcare. <strong>The</strong> proposed changes as outlined in the White Paper willrequire highly effective team working across the health service andit is anticipated that team coaching will have a valuable contributionto make.Team leaders whether established or recently appointed willbenefit from coaching as they face the challenges ahead which areunprecedented in the NHS.