The chief finance officer of NHS Southport and Formby CCG met two of their new apprentices over a coffee to support NHS Fab Change Day.

The CCGs decided to support the day with a Randomised Coffee Trial, an idea aimed at making connections throughout the NHS with people you may not usually speak to or work with.

Martin McDowell met with two apprentices who both joined the organisations in the last couple of weeks, Danny Ungi on reception and Daniel Curran who has joined the business intelligence team, to discuss how they are getting on so far and to tell them about his role in the CCG.

Talking about the CCG's first Randomised Coffee Trial, Martin said: “Fab change day is a great chance to step out of your regular day to day role to hear about the organisation from a different perspective. The Randomised Coffee Trial was a way to hear the views and experiences of staff who I wouldn’t normally work with directly. For our new apprentices, it was a chance to gain a broader understanding of the organisations they’ve recently joined, and it’s great to see how well they’ve settled in already.

“We try to provide our staff with as many opportunities as possible to tell us what it’s like working for the CCG and about where we can work better and smarter, and Randomised Coffee Trials are a great addition to the forums we already have in place. Staff ideas have already helped us to be more efficient and effective and recent examples include work to reduce things like photocopying and mobile phone bills and to look at ways of how we can play a part in our wider environment through car sharing and cycle schemes.”

Daniel Curran, business intelligence apprentice said: “It gave me a fantastic insight into the work and responsibility of the chief finance officer and gave me a chance to ask him more about the CCG and his role. He was keen to know how we found the CCG so far and took a keen interest in our roles. I know he’s really busy so it was really good of him to take this time out.”

NHS Change Day started in 2013 and was the biggest day of collective action for improvement in the history of the NHS. A countrywide event in England, NHS Change Day was a grassroots initiative devised and driven by a small group of emerging clinicians and improvement leaders.

You can read more about Fab Change Day here (www.fabnhsstuff.net/fabchangeday) and Randomised Coffee Trials here (www.fabnhsstuff.net/fabchangeday/rct).