I was alerted to the news of NHS England’s fate by my phone pinging a news app alert to me mid-meeting.
I try to avoid such distractions, but for obvious reasons this one caught my eye.
For a moment I was incredulous. “That’s not what they mean, surely. I mean, they can’t, can they?!”.
I joined the NHS much more recently than most of my colleagues, but I started by joining an organisation that had barely begun to settle into its new home in NHS Digital before the announcement came that we’d be moving into NHS England.
NDRS, my previous team, had been part of Public Health England, which was disbanded during the pandemic.
I loved that job but left late last year to pursue my current role in The Strategy Unit.
Therefore, the recent news left me feeling a mix of vertigo and deep exhaustion on behalf of my ex-colleagues for having to undergo such big change again, along with relief that I’d left when I did (plus a good dose of guilt for feeling relieved).
I joined the NHS, as so many of us did, because I need to feel a sense of genuine impact from my work. We’re surrounded by evidence of need: long waiting lists, chronic diseases, burned-out clinical staff, growing populations, desperate inequalities and terrifying headlines. We have what we need to fix these issues. We really do. Thousands of motivated, caring, skilled medical staff, mind-bending amounts of world-class health data, and the modern tools that can squeeze every drop of truth and value from those data. But NHS data and computing tools are useless without energetic and skilful analysts and data scientists.
Medicine is an evidence-based profession. With something as important as our health and lives, we cannot rely on guesswork, assumptions, or our biases. We look to data to answer the big questions. But we ask these questions because we feel empathy for patients and their families. I’m worried that the analytical workforce we rely upon to do a lot of the hard work of turning data into better health outcomes, are themselves in need of empathy right now.
Organisational change is very disruptive, time consuming, and exhausting. Those who are now fearing for their jobs may be feeling undervalued and vulnerable. I can’t comment on the necessity of the government’s choice, as its very far above my pay grade.
But I am confident that many colleagues in analytics and data science would benefit from a sense of community and mutual support.
Since 2018, the NHS-R community has been a friendly, values-led group of NHS (plus public sector and more) employees intent on doing the best thing for patients with the best data, in the best way.
The community has supported analytics and data science by providing training, resources and crucially, positive spaces to talk, share problems, swap tips and revel in the magic of coding. It’s all delightfully nerdy. The community has also received a good deal of recognition for its efforts, including this from the 2022 Goldacre review:
“The NHS-R community – with its welcoming and supportive ethos – provides an excellent entry point for those looking to begin learning the benefits of working with modern, open and collaborative data science tools, and those looking to further develop their skills by accessing the expertise in the community.”
Through the community’s Slack group, and the direct links to other community members I have forged through it, I’ve been able to chat, commiserate, vent, argue and de-stress with like-minded colleagues from across the NHS. I hugely value this, and I know many others do too. Feeling supported and included is a human need, and when work can be tough, leaning into these types of communities can offer genuine positivity and relief.
So, my advice to anyone in the NHS or wider public sector, who codes or aspires to, for health and care analysis, is to join the community. Make use of it. Post questions in the Slack. Come along to Coffee and Code. Read our blogs. Give yourself the space to use our resources to fall down an interesting rabbit hole or two. Reach out to community members, offer support to others. Be part of NHS-R. The wonderful nerdy content is fantastic, but community is the real point.
Back to top