How you bring and put your ideas forward to influence people.
Reflective analysis is the process of critical examination of the experiences of the learner and aims to connect it with the objectives of learning of the primary course. This reflective analysis is the summary of the innovative ideas developed and presented by my team. The objective of this reflective essay is the evaluation of the skills and knowledge that I gained from my teamwork. The research and presentation of the information gathered will explore the current political, social and demographic challenges that the health and social care delivery is facing in UK. The innovative ideas of my team will be linked with these challenges and will demonstrate the rising of the team to these challenges. The interpersonal skills achieved from this innovative teamwork will have profound effects on my personal and professional development. Considering the importance of the factor of confidentiality, the names of the people involved in this assignment have been altered to protect their identification (Moon 2004).
The population of UK is aging and the statistics revealed that the population aged over 65 years increased significantly from 15% in 1985 to 17% in 2010, which summed up to a rise of 1.7 million people. The projected score states that by the year 2035, it is estimated that this population will be covering about 23% of the entire population (Caley and Sidhu 2011). From the trends, it can be seen that a greater proportion of the aged population is living in an ill health condition that is long-standing and is considered a significant challenge for the system of health and social care (Muniz-Terrera et al. 2013). To meet these challenges, I along with my team developed an innovative idea of providing support to the aged and ill health population of UK and helped to promote the concept of active aging. We named the idea ‘Fitness after Fifty’ and took into consideration all the elderly people in our locality and neighborhood, who are aged and healthy, to promote the physical activities and improve their mental well-being to lead a better-aged life. We devised plans for developing healthy eating habits for them and reflected the needs and ideas of the aged people. As a part of the learning outcome of the module, we a constructed a team of six classmates innovated the idea and started working on it. I was chosen to lead the team and strategic implementation of the plans with the division of the responsibilities and taking care of the problems arising out of the activities. Overall, it was a challenging project but it exposed our knowledge and skills to the real world scenario of leadership and management of healthcare (Ons.gov.uk, 2016).
The team carried out a lot of research work and various areas of research were discussed related to the current political, social and demographic challenges in healthcare. After thorough analysis, it was identified that the aging population in UK is facing severe health issues. Most of the older people live in the long-term care settings and are considered as life limiting (Whittington, Holland and Webb 2015). It was found from the research that most of the people above the age of 65 years are living with a single long-term condition while those above the age of 75 years are living with two or more. It was also seen that the levels of care received by the older population are much poorer compared with the younger people with similar pathological conditions (Jones 2016). For the older people suffering from mental illness, the treatment regime followed is more of the prescription drugs with the lesser provision of psychological therapies. The common geriatric conditions of osteoporosis, poor vision, arthritis and urinary inconsistence do not receive the basic quality of care when compared with the general pathological conditions. There are several management programs devised by the government for the health management of the older people, however, only one out of four people above the age of 75 years of age actually receive any advice and support for self-management for fall prevention and diabetes management (Shipway e al. 2015). The shared decision making and supported self-care in UK is quite disappointing and this factor was taken up by me as the area for innovation. I proposed the plan of ‘Fitness after Fifty’ to my team and they readily agreed to participate in the project. The idea was very much relevant to the current political, social and demographic challenge of the ill health of the aging population of UK and the blueprint was chalked out for the effective implementation of the innovative ideas to meet the challenge.
For chalking out the blueprint, I took the responsibility of leading the team as I was the one who came up with the idea of creating ‘Fitness after Fifty’ and had carried the most of the research work. Therefore, I had the maximum knowledge of the topic and my team supported me as the team leader. I decided to set up a clear elevating goal with a transparent vision of the project and selected the competent classmates who could be effective in bringing about a change in the healthcare delivery services among the older people (Caley and Sidhu 2011). A team structure was created where although we worked separately but acted together as a team. I was the resource investigator as I was enthusiastic and extroverted in developing communications and contacts as these are primary qualities required by a team leader. I explored my strengths and abilities through this project where I successfully created stimuli that are required for team working and I delegated the tasks after exploring the opportunities. I also had to sell my idea to the team and had to influence them that the idea is good and innovative. Since we were all classmates and knew each other well, there was an excellent mutual understanding between us that helped me enormously to distribute the tasks. The project was for the duration of four weeks where we selected four different long-term care facilities for the elderly, one week was allotted for each of the settings. The different aspects of collaborative care planning were divided among the team members and I was responsible for co-coordinating the team activities. The agenda of our care plan was primarily based on providing care coordination and continuity using the stratification of the population risk (Hamza and Gilroy 2011). Since the team was well knowledge in the aspects of healthcare and was well aware of the policies of NHS, therefore the individual members agreed upon taking up the responsibilities for the care services according to their nursing strengths and abilities. The individual roles were selected and taken up the team members after thorough discussion and evaluation and the agreement was achieved by mutual consent and under my leadership.
Belbin invented a behavioral test for measuring the preference for the team roles. Nine team roles were invented that helped to assess the behavior of an individual in the environment of a team (Mostert 2015). It helps to extract an all round feedback from the team members as well as the team leader for the behavior evaluation and contrasts the individual observation of these behaviors by the leaders and their team members. For the project, I created my Belbin profile for the identification of gaps in my team and investigated the ideas to manage them. According to the Belbin team roles, the five team members were allotted the responsibilities of being a shaper, implementer, team worker, plant and monitor-evaluator (Navarro et al. 2013). I was the coordinator as I was the project leader and I acted as the resource investigator as I explored the external opportunities and reported the team of any new and emerging ideas and opportunities. However, there were gaps identified among the team members as they implemented the project and carried out their individual responsibilities. The shaper of the team was responsible for challenging the team for improvement. He was found to deliver his role promptly and provided the necessary drive for ensuring that the team kept on moving without losing the momentum of focus by overcoming the obstacles. However, at certain points of time, he was found to be prone towards the provocations and offended the feelings of the caregivers at the care facilities, by pointing out the areas of deficit and rudely expressing his dissatisfaction. I managed this as I advised him to keep his calm as we are already aware of the poor condition of the healthcare facilities and we are present at the situation to improve it rather than further degrading it. The implementer was responsible for planning a workable strategy on the floor and makes it work efficiently. Although she was efficient, reliable and practical in turning ideas into actions, however, she was a bit inflexible and was slow in responding to the new possibilities. I managed this issue by sharing the responsibilities with her and guided her in the process of implementation of ideas. Team worker had the versatility for identification of the required work and completed it. He is diplomatic, perceptive and cooperative and averts the frictions in the team. However, his virtues tend to become indecisive in times of crunch situations and he had the tendency to avoid confrontations. I had to manage this as well as I approached him with the advice to face the situation without worrying about the consequences and be positive in worrying situations. If anything goes wrong, I will be there to fix it and he should not be too much worrisome while taking decisions (Belbin 2012). No gap was observed as such with the plant and monitor evaluator and I kept on thoroughly monitoring the entire project to eliminate the emerging problems.
I, based on my responsibilities, analyzed my Belbin profile. I had to play two major roles in the team apart from being the leader. I was the resource investigator and the coordinator. As a resource investigator, I used my inquisitive nature for finding out ideas and implemented them in the team. My strengths of being enthusiastic, outgoing, communicative and opportunity explorer helped me to carry out my responsibility. However, I analyzed my weaknesses to be over-optimistic about the team performance and I started to lose interest during the initial pitfalls of the project with the members. I managed to cope up with these negative mentalities and followed up on my lead. As a coordinator, I focused on the objectives of the team and appropriately delegated the work (Benner 2001). My managerial abilities of being confident, mature, clear vision and talent identification abilities helped me out in delivering my performance. However, I intended to be manipulative at times by giving too much freedom to my team members and offloaded my part of work on others, thereby increasing their workload. This caused sufficient discomfort in the team that I managed by rectifying my faults and being ethical (Jasper 2003). I had to be perfect on my part and address the areas of development as I had to link my activities with the quality agenda of the team and I had to develop and utilize the presentation and influencing skills.
From the project, I have learned enough about presenting unique ideas and implementing them in healthcare by teamwork. My skill and knowledge gained from the project will help me immensely to utilize them in future. Developing innovations are extremely important from the point of view of enhancing the quality of service delivery for the older people in UK and influencing the team members and decision makers can help me developing my leadership knowledge and skills in future. I also had a broad and bright concept about the current demographic and political strains facing the NHS (National Health Service) and we successfully explored the possible way out of this healthcare dilemma.
References
Belbin, R.M., 2012. Management teams. Routledge.
Benner, P.E., 2001. From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Pearson.
Caley, M. and Sidhu, K. 2011, “Estimating the future healthcare costs of an aging population in the UK: expansion of morbidity and the need for preventative care”,Journal of public health (Oxford, England), vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 117.
Caley, M. and Sidhu, K. 2011, “Estimating the future healthcare costs of an aging population in the UK: expansion of morbidity and the need for preventative care”,Journal of public health (Oxford, England), vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 117.
Hamza, N. and Gilroy, R. 2011, “The challenge to UK energy policy: An ageing population perspective on energy saving measures and consumption”, Energy Policy, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 782-789.
Jasper, M., 2003. Beginning reflective practice. Nelson Thornes.
Jones, R., 2016. The Unprecedented Growth in Medical Admissions in the UK: The ageing population or a possible infectious/immune aetiology.Epidemiology (sunnyvale), 6(219), pp.2161-1165.
Moon, J.A., 2004. A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. Psychology Press.
Mostert, N., 2015. Belbin–the way forward for innovation teams. Journal of Creativity and Business Innovation, 1.
Muniz-Terrera, G., van den Hout, A., Piccinin, A.M., Matthews, F.E. and Hofer, S.M. 2013, “Investigating terminal decline: results from a UK population-based study of aging”,Psychology and aging, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 377-385.
Navarro, F., Rodrigues Martinez, J., Fierro Ma Monguet, J. and Trejo Omenaca, A., 2013, December. Team equilibrium and innovation performance. In Design Management Symposium (TIDMS), 2013 IEEE Tsinghua International (pp. 30-36). IEEE.
Ons.gov.uk. (2016). Families and Households- Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2012-11-01 [Accessed 11 Jun. 2016].
Shipway, D.J.H., Partridge, J.S.L., Foxton, C.R., Modarai, B., Gossage, J.A., Challacombe, B.J., Marx, C. & Dhesi, J.K. 2015, “Do surgical trainees believe they are adequately trained to manage the ageing population? A UK survey of knowledge and beliefs in surgical trainees”, Journal of surgical education, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. 641-647.
Whittington, J.E., Holland, A.J. and Webb, T. 2015, “Ageing in people with Prader-Willi syndrome: mortality in the UK population cohort and morbidity in an older sample of adults”, Psychological medicine, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 615-7.
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