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ProNurse Interviews Dave Dawes, Nurse and Social Entrepreneur

ProNurse Interviews Dave Dawes, Nurse and Social Entrepreneur

ProNurse

“Most of the stress in nursing is not being in control of the care that you are delivering or feeling that you’re delivering really poor care.”

Wise words from Dave Dawes, co-founder of the Foundation of Nursing Leadership and founder of Entreprenurses.

So, if you’re stressed at work do you grumble about it or start doing something to change it? It’s much easier said than done but Dave tells us how it is possible as he discusses how he went from a general nurse to chief exec before going it alone in the public sector.

PN:

What made you become a nurse and what made you want to take a step away from patients and move into management?

DD:

I did a degree in maths first and someone from the NMC did once tell me that I am the only maths graduate that they have on the NMC register! 95% of maths graduates become maths teachers or accountants. I didn’t want to do either so I did a career aptitude test at university and it suggested nursing and social work. My mum was a nurse and I had been a first-aid instructor in the Territorial Army so I thought I’d give it a stab and see how I like it. I started my training and loved it.

Very early on in my training I was becoming frustrated with the way the system seemed to be working, how I was seeing wards run. There seemed to be a lot of really rubbish decisions being made. You deal with that kind of frustration in a number of ways. I thought I could do this a lot better so when I qualified I managed to get on the NHS management training programme.

It was interesting as I went from being a staff nurse on a general medical ward, to immediately being the manager of the A&E department, surgical outpatients, four operating theatres, two surgical wards and an orthopaedic ward!

PN:

How much experience did you have of being a nurse on the wards?

DD:

I did nine months of clinical practice and when I started the management programme I did voluntary work on my old shift for about a year until that stopped working out. I’ve been out of clinical practice for the past 15 years and do miss it from time to time.

PN:

You managed to be become one of the youngest chief executives in the NHS at the time, how old were you?

DD:

I was 31 and someone said here’s £92 million and 100,000 people to look after, off you go! It was a real learning experience and I did enjoy a lot of it but it is very different to what a lot of people imagine. If you work in a hospital or a PCT you see the Chief Exec as the top dog, someone with full control of the money. When you get to that level you realise that there are lots of layers above that, such as the Strategic Health Authority and the Department of Health. You imagine you are at the top of the tree but you soon realise that you are just one branch with lots of other branches above you.

PN:

Having been a nurse and a manager can you see areas where both parties criticise each other, but with some co-ordination could work together very well?

DD:

Massively so. If we take the RCN as an example, I am Chair of the Nurses in Management and Leadership Roles forum and I can remember open hostility between nurses in clinical practice and their managers in the early 1990s at RCN Congress. I think that has got better over the last decade and when both sides understand each other it can work very well.

If I am coaching nurses I try to get them to understand the world as their manager does and to try to understand what board members or senior managers do. Conversely when I train people with no clinical background I tell them that they have to understand the care they are commissioning and managing. Without fundamentally understanding this they are going to make some really dreadful mistakes. It takes real effort on both sides.

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