Kenny Steele is the CEO of Highland Hospice.
A keen runner and cyclist, Kenny also plays a hands on role in supporting the community fundraising activities of the organisation as well as taking an accessible approach to leadership throughout the hospice, from volunteers to nurses and administrators.
Sometimes you come across something that just makes sense. That was the feeling when I first heard about ECHO nearly 7 years ago. Highland Hospice is a specialist centre for palliative care with vast amounts of knowledge and experience. However most palliative care is delivered by other parts of the health and social care system, often with limited access to training or support. For a long time., we have recognised that sharing the knowledge in the Hospice was probably the best way to improve the quality of palliative and end of life care in Highland. However, none of the traditional education options ever quite delivered what was needed.
I think part of the reason for this was that we were imparting knowledge rather than sharing knowledge. The ‘all teach, all learn’ philosophy of ECHO is very powerful. Just because our team have excellent knowledge and experience in palliative care doesn’t mean they know how to apply it in a different setting, for example in care homes. ECHO recognises that care home workers are experts in their field and Hospice workers are experts in their fields. Put the two together to share knowledge and support each other and the magic starts to happen.
So how did we go from ‘using’ ECHO in a palliative care setting to becoming the Scottish Centre for ECHO?
To begin with we just felt that this was too good a methodology to keep to ourselves and started helping other Scottish Hospices to establish themselves as ECHO hubs. We then started getting requests from other specialists who recognised that they needed to share their specialist knowledge with health and social care professionals who were closer to their patients in the community. There are excellent examples of ECHO supporting Respiratory, Diabetes, Cardiology….the list goes on and on.
We could see the growing demand for ECHO methodology but were restricted in our ability to provide support, as at the end of the day we are a palliative care charity. However, we also have a very entrepreneurial streak. I think that comes from having to run businesses to raise funds as well as delivering health and social care. In good old Dragons Den style we pitched the idea of establishing a Scottish ECHO Centre to our colleagues in Scottish Government and special thanks must go to Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director and his Deputy John Harden who had been inspired by the methodology and championing the cause. At that time Donna Bell, Director of Social Care at Scottish Government was the first ‘Dragon’ to see value in ‘investing’ and that led to the development of the Centre and it’s been all systems go since then.
I firmly believe that we need to get better at working in networks to achieve the goals of the health and social care system. The old ways of working in silos just isn’t fit for the future (or now). We need to break down hierarchies and boundaries within and between organisations. However to work in a different way we need new tools to ensure we retain the high quality and safety of the system. We believe ECHO will be an important methodology in supporting that change and we are delighted to be working with Scottish Government to make that change happen.