Learning from others is part of our personal and professional lives – we learn by listening to how others have solved that wicked problem we find ourselves scratching our head over. We are also often inspired to try new things when we hear about the journeys others have had and what they achieved.

The Academy of Fab NHS has really moved into this space, they have a phenomenal amount of examples from practice, commissioning and strategic development across the whole life course. They are prolific in sharing these,NHS change week really galvanised people via social media has been buzzing with action on pledges and examples of improvements! It’s exhausting and exciting trying to keep up!

I am however puzzled though why as nurses are we often reticent about sharing good practice? I often wonder why? My role means I often get to visit so many services and to speak with so many different individuals and teams so I ask the question why don’t write this up as a case study? The resounding response is not what you think it might be – I expected people to say I’m too busy but this wasn’t the case. The overwhelming response has been – ‘oh it’s nothing special, I bet everyone is doing this!’ Well they are not and we need to learn together through sharing, exploring, critiquing and just be curious!

There is a long history of case studies within health as a tool for learning and development. Case studies and practice examples are different; case studies tend to be more measurable unpinned with evidence and clear impact measures whilst practice examples are more reflective showing the journey and learning. Both are invaluable – the learning is rich and we can apply the lessons learnt to support new developments or service improvements.As part of our national work at PHE we are often asked for case studies and practice examples, more recently since we became a WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Midwifery the requests have more frequent from colleagues within the UK, Europe and further afield.

 So we want to use this discussion to inspire you to get involved with writing case studies and practice examples; explore the value of both approaches; discuss the differences and uses; discuss reviewing examples and how to get started; how we can use case studies and practice examples to improve; and understand how we can encourage more sharing and dissemination.

So let your curiosity get the better of you and join us for an exciting discussion!                     

‘You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to share your unique perspective on why the wheel is important!’