By Healthcare Facilities Today

NHS Change Day started with a conversation on Twitter between a group of trainee doctors and improvement leaders in the summer of 2012. They began exchanging ideas about bringing together staff across the National Health Service, the publicly-funded healthcare system in Great Britain, to produce positive change and improvement.

The first NHS Change Day was on March 13, 2013. The initial goal was to involve 65,000 people - 1,000 for each year since the NHS was established. In the end, over 189,00 people pledged to take a specific action to improve the outcomes and experience of care for patients on a sustainable basis, according to an article on The Guardian's website. 

The Change Day team has been invited to the Francis implementation team's regional events to discuss how organizations can engage with staff. It is the only UK entry to have been shortlisted for Harvard Business Review's "leaders everywhere challenge," according to the article.

The article sited numerous examples of Change Day efforts, including an initiative at a Birmingham children's hospital dubbed Feedback Wednesday where different departments get feedback from patients. This Change Day initiative is changing practice and creating a culture that isn't based on target-based, haphazard feedback but that responds to patients' needs, the article said.

Read the article.