APCP member, Shirley Hallett shares how the Therapy Services at Birmingham Children's Hospital are working hard to raise awareness of EDI issues and developing strategies to tackle health inequalities.
2020 was a turbulent year for many reasons and the Black Lives Matter movement highlighted the need to increase awareness and speak out about discrimination against people of colour. Birmingham and the West Midlands is a culturally diverse area and we wanted to ensure we were accountable for our actions in reducing discrimination within our departments by increasing awareness and opening the conversation surrounding this topic. Birmingham Children’s Hospital has a number of Trust-wide projects looking at equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) but we wanted to develop this further within our therapy services.
We have developed three working groups discussing how EDI impacts our practice and our patients and families. The groups are based around tackling the mountain - Climbing Wall, Base Camp and Summit.
The aim of these groups was to develop personal awareness and understanding and approach issues with the aim of identifying unconscious bias and making positive changes with our practice.
Each group holds regular meetings with support from the more experienced groups as needed.
- Climbing Wall was aimed at staff who felt new to these conversations and wanted support to learn.
- Base Camp was aimed at staff who felt familiar with the topic and work needed but wanted a forum to learn and discuss this further.
- Summit was aimed at staff who felt knowledgeable and competent to start making changes at departmental and Trust level.
Some practical examples of work that we are doing within the department are:
- Reviewing tape, dressings and splints to see if we can represent a variety of skin colours
- Ensuring everyone has EDI goals in their PDR (Personal Development Review) and within speciality teams
- Encouraging and promoting attendance at courses and lectures on EDI
- Reviewing all of our patient resources to ensure that they represent the diversity of our staff and patient population
- Updating our student information to reflect EDI
- Staff noticeboard for all updates regarding EDI
We are continuing to work on our approach to EDI in our department and would be very happy to hear from other centres with their ideas. Please email on shirleyhallett@nhs.net if you would like to discuss further.