Following on from a series of hospital visits and presentations on the health of the nation and the development of the HI strategy, the IEHG HI hospital leads workshop took place on Wednesday 17th August in the Royal Hospital Donnybrook. The HI hospital leads/nominees are local champions who have volunteered to support the roll out HI within their local hospital.

With all 11 hospitals represented, the meeting was an opportunity for the participants representing each of the hospitals to meet with colleagues undertaking similar roles across the group, and to discuss the practicalities of implementing HI within individual hospitals. A round table was held with Hospitals representatives gave an overview of HI within their hospital (what is working, what are their strengths and their issues).

The workshop commenced with a presentation by Professor Donal O’Shea on the determinants of health and HI in terms of the national context and how Ireland East can contribute to its implementation. A key message from his presentation is that implementation of HI is a journey (2025) and everyone must contribute to changing the culture to allow HI be implemented and sustained. He spoke of the need for changes in approach/culture and gave analogies of the change management introduced in Harlequins rugby club.

The workshop was very well received by the hospitals, Prof Donal O’Shea’s contribution was particularly well received “the workshop gave a good idea of where we are at and where we are going”.

Each hospital through their local HI Lead will continue to have an opportunity to guide the development of the IEHG Plan. Following the delivery of the Ireland East implementation plan each hospital will be required to develop a local implementation plan.

The IEHG implementation plan will be launched by the end of the year. For further information, contact HI@iehg.ie  

About Healthy Ireland:  

In July 2015 the HSE published ‘Healthy Ireland in the Health Services’ – a national implementation plan for the Healthy Ireland Framework which specifically focuses on the HSE, its workforce, services and the people it cares for. 

Health and Wellbeing reforms will over time become embedded into Hospital Group and Community Health Organisation (CHO) structures. As part of the 2016 Service Plan all Hospital Groups and CHOs will develop their own capability to progress the HI agenda and will publish their own implementation plan based on the national plan.