Listening within the NHS

Our Vision is to encourage the development of a listening culture within NHS Highland/

To realise that vision NHS Highland Chaplaincy, Raigmore Hospital in Inverness and Acorn in Scotland have been working within two areas of health care.
The first has been the undertaking of a programme of listening training with the Oncology department. Over sixty staff and volunteers within NHS Highland have completed a ten - hour listening course – Listening for Life.

Participants have valued the opportunity to improve their listening skills together with gaining a greater understanding of the importance of listening for the well – being of others. It has provided them with additional resources in the often difficult role of coming alongside patients suffering with cancer and their relatives and friends. The course also raised a greater awareness of the importance of listening within staff teams and of the need to be able to listen to themselves for their own health and well-being.

Maggie’s Highland has been the perfect venue for these courses. The additional benefit of the training has been the deepening of relationships between NHS Chaplaincy and those working within cancer care.

Further courses are planned for Oncology but the hope is to open up the training to all staff within the hospital and this has already been planned for 2010.

The second is an exciting new listening initiative being piloted in Inverness where trained listeners will be placed within local GP surgeries for a period of six months. NHS Highand Chaplaincy Raigmore Hospital Inverness working in partnership with Acorn in Scotland has been responsible for the training of listeners and the planning and development of the project as a research study. This past year began with our vision being shared with church communities and local GPs. This then progressed to three listeners completing the rigorous training and collaborative talks with local GPs resulting in four surgeries participating in the pilot study. It is our belief that this vision also reflects the delivery of the spiritual care policy of NHS Highland. The trained listeners are due to begin in surgeries early in January 2010.
 
It is hoped the study will provide evidence that listening plays an important and integral part in peoples’ well-being. We hope, too, it will lead to this model being adopted across NHS Highland and beyond to other health boards throughout Scotland.

Rev Dr Derek Brown, Lead Chaplain, NHS Highland,
Raigmore Hospital, Inverness writes,

“Listening for life, health and community is the heart of Acorn in Scotland’s philosophy and I have had the privilege of watching this being enacted within the relationship built up between NHS Highland Chaplaincy and Acorn in Scotland.
 
Undertaking the various listening courses available from Acorn has enabled many individuals from churches and the health service to listen more carefully to others and to themselves and equip them for life. We are beginning a new venture in taking listening into GP surgeries for a pilot study which we hope will demonstrate that listening is good for health and by extension the wider community.

Within the hospital setting the opportunities for groups of staff to engage with one another, learning to listen to one another, has helped them to develop and integrate as a team to a deeper level.

I am exited about the programme Acorn has to offer and I trust that it will go on from strength to strength. “