Dear HRG Comrades,
As always, I was deeply impressed at Wednesday’s meeting by the breadth and depth of experience and expertise contained within the body of membership of the HRG. It is matched only by the strength of passion and commitment to improving the Australian healthcare system.
It worries me at times that well thought out, highly innovative proposals for improvement die when the meeting ends. Not entirely so, as many HRG members pursue them within their own sphere.
I would like to raise for discussion a proposal to capture ideas onto a one page ‘Concept Sheet’ for group discussion, refinement, endorsement or dismissal as a HRG statement.
In research, there is a basic tenet : if a novel discovery isn’t written down and shown to others, it doesn’t exist.
In this, I am not requiring the HRG to become more public but to have in its ‘back pocket’ brief documents for several possible purposes including pre-reading or follow up contact with decision makers who attend HRG dinners, easy expansion into longer documents for publication (Pearls & Irritations and others) and other uses.
A great strength of this process is the extraordinary breadth of ‘peer review’ which few, if any, organisations in Australia could match.
So that this email doesn’t die after reading, I’ve kicked off with the attached HRG Concept Sheet on a proposal only in small part within my areas of expertise.
As I’ve reached a post-ego phase of life, brutal criticism (on the Concept Sheet idea or the first example) is fine so long as it doesn’t stifle the opinions of others.
I look forward to replies, brutal and otherwise.
Best regards,
Graeme