In 1986, when I qualified as a nurse, I moved to Leeds to work and have worked there on and off for the last 27 years.  It’s a special city.

Although I don’t work for a local health organisation in Leeds any longer I do work there at the NHS England central offices.  I try as much as I can to support city wide initiatives such as ‘Leaders for Leeds’  and am interested in the ambitious plans for the movement towards more integrated digital records across health and social care in the city.

I also believe that change comes about through people and relationships and I have always striven to be well networked and to act as someone who enables improved relationships and connections, if you like building new nodes to networks.

So along comes NHS Change Day 2014.  Last year I took on a very personal challenge to visit more front-line services and shared the outcomes of that through this blog.  Interestingly and importantly I am going to continue to do this well beyond the pledge of 2013.  So what should I do this year?

I am convinced that encouraging people to talk helps make things better and working with a group of colleagues in Leeds came up with the idea of encouraging people to talk and connect as a pledge.  Victoria Betton pointed me at the ‘Randomised Coffee Trials’ held by Nesta (see more here ) and we came up with the idea of Leeds Connected Coffee*.

We wondered what would happen if we encouraged everyone to have a new conversation to get to know each other better.  There are often people we have contact with who we would like to know more about what they do, or who they are.  The idea is that you just invite them for a 30 minute coffee.  It could be someone from another department or a service user, or someone from the voluntary sector or just about anyone really.  You could do it more than once; I aim to 🙂

We just ask you to pledge on our community site and then let us know through any media what happens!  We hope it’s the start of some new conversations and relationships.

My first two invites for coffee went to Phil Jewitt from Leeds City Council (@philjewitt) and Sir David Nicholson and Sir Bruce Keogh – all interesting people I hope you will agree and they all seem to have agreed in principle! Exciting 🙂

So go for it! Get those coffee invites out !! Sign the pledge here:

< scroll down the pledges to find Leeds Connected Coffee

*Cake is allowed