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Programme Design and Educational Consultancy

Programme Design and Educational Consultancy

In addition to our pioneering work on the use of digital patient narratives to focus the attention of managers, clinicians and those who govern public sector bodies on the personal impact, for good or ill, of what can sometimes appear to be routine or remote fiscal or bureaucratic actions, we have detailed knowledge of the health and social care context. Combining over 40 years of experience in education, quality assurance and software development with a passion for making learning ‘delightful’ and a genuine interest in how people learn, we specialise, as Pilgrim Projects Limited, in developing work-based learning programmes in open, distance and e-learning formats, with a particular focus on healthcare and education.

Here are some of the materials that support those programmes. If you would like support in delivering an existing programme, or the development of a new resource, please contact us.


DNA of Care facilitator packs
Following the celebration and launch of the DNA of Care stories in November 2016 and the successful Shared Learning Event in December 2017, NHS England responded to a number of requests for support in using the stories effectively. The result has been the development of these guides for facilitators.

“I think these packs are truly excellent, innovative and of great value and I would certainly use them to support the use of the wide range of valuable stories that there are available.”

The guides in the series reflect topical issues and are intended to help facilitators make links between the stories and some of the things that are current priorities in the NHS. Currently available guides are:

  • Bringing your whole self to work
  • Compassion
  • Compassionate leadership
  • Improvement and change
  • Resilience
  • Equality and Diversity
  • Bullying and Harassment

For each topic there is a guide and a powerpoint presentation.


E-Health Connections Nursing Workshop: Connecting to the future

This workbook contains preparatory reading and activities for a Nursing Visioning Day workshop, held in 2007, which aimed to act as a prompt to critical reflection and imaginative engagement with the many ways in which Information Communications Technology (ICT) and the nursing task can interact. This preparatory reflection enabled delegates to make the fullest possible contribution on the day of the workshop.

The workshop was designed to provide a different forum for critical reflection from those with which staff are familiar. The workbook introduces some of the approaches and the issues that formed the substantive content of the workshop, and provides the opportunity to watch, read and think about patient stories – and to dream a future story.

‘We are, after all, seeking to create the future story of healthcare, and this will, in turn, be shaped by the ongoing stories – both individual and collective – of those who deliver and receive healthcare. Indeed, it may be appropriate to consider nurses, in their future role, as keepers of the stories – the personal stories of individual experience as well as the careful documentation that will safeguard patients throughout their journey.’

                Pip Hardy, 2006

This workbook contains preparatory reading and activities for a Quality and Patient Experience workshop held in 2007. The workshop was designed to provide a more interactive forum for critical reflection, and the workbook offered delegates an opportunity to become familiar with both the substantive content and some of the approaches used on the day.
The workbook was intended to act as a prompt to critical reflection and imaginative engagement with the many ways in which the quality of experience of patients with renal problems could be improved. As you go through the workbook, you aree invited to:

  • consider some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses in the ways that care is currently provided and the extent to which care meets the Standards set out in Parts I and II of the National Service Framework for Renal Patients (2004 & 2006) DH.
  • explore ways in which patients themselves (and their own carers) can become more fully involved as active partners with professional staff at all points in the definition of the renal services that are needed for local communities, the commissioning of these services and the delivery and evaluation of care
  • consider ways in which the potential of new technology, new information systems and the electronic patient record could be used as a driver and enabler of service improvement.

The workbook provides you with the opportunity to watch, to read and think about patient stories – and to begin to reflect on the stories you could tell about the process of care and the opportunities for improvement – whether your perspective is that of a patient, a carer, a commissioner or a member of a clinical team.
The workbook contains a number of tasks. You can expect to spend between one and one and a half hours if you engage fully with the activities and with the reading included in the two appendices.


Fit for the future: 21st century public services that promote health and wellbeing
This workbook was created to help delegates prepare for a Futures Group workshop held in 2007. Its purpose is to prompt reflection upon, and analysis of, some of the issues that must be kept under ongoing critical review if local services are to become and remain fit for the challenges that they have inherited – and which will confront them over the next decades. It attempts to encourage and support creative engagement with complex realities and perplexing uncertainties.
The sections invite participants to consider how the interactions between global, national and local social, economic and technological factors shape need and determine patterns of provision. They also set out the nature and scope of the public sector reform agenda and the key roles and functions of ‘new’ PCTs and encourage engagement with, and reflection on, these issues.


Creativity in Education
The best forms of learning have been described as ‘tough fun’ – experiences that are both inspiring and inspired by educators who foster an ongoing passion for learning and who nurture their own and their students’ creative energies.
For many of us, the experiences that have shaped our professional identities – both as caring professionals and as educators of new professionals – derive from the rich experience and the privilege of working with those who are in (often extreme) need. This, however, can be a draining as well as a rewarding process.
Much emphasis is placed upon ‘reflection’ as a key source of professional learning, but it is not always made explicit that ‘reflection’ is not simply the act of ‘remembering’ a specific interaction or event. ‘Reflection’, as a prompt to learning, implies ‘thinking around’ an event – looking at it from different perspectives and seeking to develop a ‘felt understanding’ of what was happening by exploring the different ‘shadows’ cast when it is ‘illuminated‘ from different perspectives and by different senses than the purely intellectual/abstract.
As an aid to this type of ‘reflection’, to deepen our understanding of the situation of those whom we seek to help, and/or to recharge our own emotional and intellectual batteries, many turn to the creative arts – painting, poetry, fiction, drama, film, sculpture, handicraft or music – occasionally as creators, but more often as engaged audiences. In this way, our one brief experience of time can be extended so that we can live, imaginatively, a thousand lifetimes and enhance our empathic understanding of the world as it is experienced by others.
These influences and the understandings they generate can help to sustain our own creativity as well as to form and to refine our professional identities and develop our capacity to care.
As professional educators they can sustain our passion for learning and help us to be imaginative in our facilitation of students’ learning, enriching it through access to their own, and others’, creativity.
The boundary of ‘creativity’ should be an inclusive one – and not one that is ‘owned’ by a self-styled social or intellectual ‘elite’.
Stories are one of the ways we express and share our common humanity and they can be told in so many ways. The power of stories and of personal narratives as creative prompts to, and sources of, deep learning is another key theme. A number of digital stories are used to illustrate and illuminate the issues raised in this workshop, which was given at the 2008 NET conference.


Want to make your own stories?

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