Today HSJ, Nursing Times and NHS Improving Quality have launched a free interactive guide on how to achieve bottom-up change in the NHS.

The guide has been entirely curated from over 13,000 contributions offered by the NHS workforce and patients as part of a three month Challenge Top-Down Change campaign.

Contributions received as part the campaign reveal a sense of dissatisfaction among staff on not having a real stake in the future of their organisations and how it adapts.

The need for leaders to listen to staff and patient ideas was repeatedly drawn on. They want leaders to be seen to be “taking action to address problems – not blaming but developing”.

Using a crowdsourcing methodology developed by Clever Together, staff and the public were asked what things enable bottom-up change in the NHS and what are the barriers to change?

For the second phase of the campaign, the public were asked for solutions to these barriers and enablers. For the third and final phase, contributors were invited to further develop the most popular ideas. 

Overall 3,595 people from 45 countries took part. A public voting system and expert panels, both within and outside the industry, selected the best submissions for further development into implementable ideas.

The resulting toolkit identifies:

The guide can act as a starting point for individuals wanting to support bottom-up change among NHS staff. It is available from both the HSJ and Nursing Times’ websites. A series of videos will also be published from Monday onwards.

Thought leadership articles, as well as best practice case studies and videos can also be viewed as part of the guide.