Who we are
What is Vivideer
Founded in 2014, Vivideer is an independent consultancy service helping NHS leaders find clarity of purpose and action in a congested, and often fraught, operating environment.
“My aim is to help staff flourish in their professional roles and through them, benefit the organisation.”
At the Heart of Vivideer: Lesley Stephen
An experienced NHS Director, having held Strategy, Operations, and Improvement portfolios in acute, teaching, mental health and regulatory bodies. Lesley uses her experience of leading in complex organisations and across systems in her work as a consultant, helping senior leadership teams understand and utilise the push and pull of national policies and local need, to enhance their effectiveness. Lesley is adept at helping teams to confront and tackle difficult issues, working with them to develop practical solutions to improve patient and staff experience. Her recent Master’s dissertation The Harm in Healing explored the moral injury of doctors.
Core Values
With a strong belief in the value of acting with integrity and compassion, Lesley understands the challenges and pressures of the responsibility for upholding standards that rests with the Board, and between managers and clinical professionals.
What we do
Quality improvement & leadership
Lesley uses her experience to help new leadership teams successfully recognise and navigate the sometimes competing and contradictory political and regulatory demands driving system policies. Lesley’s collaborative approach to team working focuses on encouraging all partners to review their processes and share their experiences honestly with each other. She enjoys using qualitative and quantitative data sets to move teams beyond reliance on anecdote into analysis to challenge orthodox thinking and create a sustained momentum for change.
Service reviews
An independent, impartial review of how a service is functioning can identify process issues through to factors driving poor team behaviour and resulting in problematic practice. If causes are understood prioritised options to address issues arising and improve service delivery and team dynamics can be designed. The ability of external reviewers to bear witness to the anxieties and frustrations of individuals demonstrates to teams that their leaders are responding to their concerns and are actively listening and seeking improvement.
Team reviews: An alternative to Maintaining Higher Performance Standards Procedure
Team reviews can be a powerful tool in addressing concerns. The Maintaining Higher Performance Standards (MHPS) process locates problems with an individual practitioner, yet the environment in which an individual practices will always affect their work. A well-functioning team identifies and addresses concerns early-on together, whilst in a dysfunctional team poor behaviours and practice can continue unchecked and escalate. If there are problems with behaviours in a department, service or team, an MHPS investigation of an individual may not only be unfair but may fail to identify and tackle wider issues affecting practice. An independent team review maybe the first step to positive resolution.
Moral injury
Lesley recently completed a Masters at UCL affording her a new lens through which to view NHS policy and practice. Lesley’s dissertation “The Harm in Healing” explores the moral injury of doctors, enabling her to examine one of the oft-cited drivers of low morale in the NHS, considering where moral injury sits on the continuum of workplace psychological harms, its causes, and possible mitigations at the system, organisational and team levels. Leaders need to understand moral injury and adopt practical interventions to reduce its prevalence and its impact.
Get in touch
Lesley is a Chartered Accountant with an Honours degree and Masters in Public Administration: a disciplined professional with intellectual curiosity.
Lesley also works in association with the Organisational Development consultancy
Space4 Consulting.
© Vivideer 2024