{"id":48665,"date":"2020-12-11T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.highspeedtraining.co.uk\/hub\/?p=48665"},"modified":"2024-06-17T17:24:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T16:24:46","slug":"champions-in-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highspeedtraining.co.uk\/hub\/champions-in-healthcare\/","title":{"rendered":"Champions in Healthcare: Role and Responsibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Champions are present in many different industries and job roles. By definition, a champion is any employee that\u2019s dedicated to improving a certain area in a company. For example, they may be dedicated to improving the work processes of a corporation, they may want to improve overall employee wellbeing in an organisation, or they may want to provide a greater level of service to customers or service users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Champions in healthcare settings play an important role in improving their organisation. In this article, we will outline the role and responsibilities of champions in healthcare, as well as the benefits of creating champions in your setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is a Change Champion?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In summary, a change champion is an individual in an organisation who volunteers, or has a job role, to facilitate change within the organisation. They advocate the change, promote it, and are instrumental in ensuring it is implemented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as promoting new ideas for change, they also support the vision of the organisation and encourage and motivate others to be inspired by their ideas too. As such, they are important for helping to move new ideas or innovations through initiation and development all the way to implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Roles and Responsibilities of Champions in Healthcare<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The role of a champion in healthcare is an important one. It brings forward change and ensures that services are constantly improving and working towards a better standard, benefiting both the health service and its service users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A champion has a responsibility to identify gaps and inefficiencies in the way the healthcare organisation operates, and must be confident in their ideas and able to speak out. They must value providing high quality care and ensuring that care never falls below this standard. They must also be able to lead the change necessary for improving things internally and externally within the healthcare system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Healthcare environments may just have one champion, or they may have multiple, depending on the size of the organisation and the necessity for different people to oversee different practices. For example, a large organisation may have senior leaders who are champions for large projects or new developments, but may also have staff who are champions for improving day-to-day tasks, such as investigating how altering meal times in a residential home can improve the quality of life for its residents. As a result, it\u2019s common for healthcare organisations to appoint champion roles to different members of the team in order for them to focus on different aspects of care.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The changes that healthcare champions bring about can be large, sweeping changes that affect thousands of people, or they can affect just a few. For example, they may need to bring about an entire new system of working across an organisation, or they may make some smaller adjustments that are just as essential and important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an example, Skills for Care explain on one of their blog posts<\/a> that an organisation implemented a \u2018continence champion\u2019. This person now undertakes all continence assessments and then orders any necessary supplies immediately. Prior to the appointing of this champion, a patient would have had to wait for a District Nurse to do this – delaying what they need and affecting their level of care. This change saw the organisation receive an \u2018outstanding\u2019 rating from the CQC: a true mark of the high quality care that they are delivering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Benefits of Healthcare Change Champions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gaining an outstanding rating, as mentioned in the example above, is just one of many benefits that appointing champions can lead to. In fact, the benefits of having change champions are wide-ranging and can include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n