By Leah Lamb, Research and Communications Coordinator, Involve North East
My day starts around 7am depending on the hunger levels of my two boys! Working from home two days a week I ‘manage’ the pre-school rush with breakfast, spellings, teeth cleaning, dressing, checking on the caterpillars all ticked off the list before 8.30. After school drop-off my working day begins with the usual logging on to Teams to say good morning to my colleagues and then a look through my emails to see what has come in overnight.
My work varies from day to day but this morning we have just closed an online survey. My job today is to download the data and cleanse it, checking for duplicate responses, answers to questions that need to be moved to different sections and anything we need to immediately flag to North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board who we are carrying out the work on behalf of.
I then start to analyse the data, creating charts and tables to display responses, looking at the aggregated data for patterns and trends and coding open questions (although I have to say Corinna has taken my crown as coding queen!). The data analysis will take another week, and this will be combined with data we have collected from interviews at which point I’ll be able to start to draft the report.
I pause my analysis at lunchtime to grab some food and put the washing on the line (perks of working from home!). After lunch I attend a Teams meeting with Newcastle University to discuss an ongoing project we’re collaborating on around accessing primary care in foodbanks. We agree to meet again in two weeks.
After writing up the meeting notes I turn my attention to one of my other responsibilities, communications. I try to visit our Twitter and LinkedIn profiles each day to Tweet about our work or post an article, respond to relevant activity and make new connections. I’ve just sent out our quarterly newsletter so have a few emails to reply to relating to that.
The day ends with a Teams chat with Jen, Corinna and AJ; we’ll all be in the office together tomorrow so are looking forward to being face-to-face and having a proper catch up. I’m out the door to collect the kids from after-school club then it’s a mad dash to their swimming lesson across town!
What do you enjoy most about working for Involve North East?
It’s what we stand for – giving patients, carers and the public a voice around health services. To be able to provide the best possible service which meets the needs of all communities, health services need to listen and learn from their patients and playing a part in that is so rewarding!
