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Abstract: This is a very personal, thought-provoking and heart-warming session that will leave you inspired, reflective and overall in awe of such an amazing individual that we were blessed to have as part of healthcare.

My inspiring wife Dr Kate Granger MBE along with myself came up with a social media campaign that has gone on to revolutionise patient care across global healthcare. This session will take you on the journey from the conception of #hellomynameis to how it now fits within healthcare and how Kate’s legacy continues through the work I do and the numerous accolades named after her.

Biography: Hello, my name is Chris Pointon and I am the husband of the late Dr Kate Granger MBE who was a doctor and patient. My wife died in 2016 aged just 34 after 5 years living with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Throughout that time we raised over £250,000 for charity (now at £380,000) and changed global healthcare through a simple campaign we started in 2013 entitled #hellomynameis. Following Kate’s death I continue to promote the campaign through talking at various conferences across the globe and worldwide awareness on social media.

I don’t officially work in healthcare myself and have spent my career of 26 years within retail and logistics with the last 17 years in the home office of a major global retailer. I recently finished a 12 month sabbatical from my career travelling the world raising awareness of the campaign and promoting compassionate care in healthcare and beyond, along with raising vast amounts of money for charity.

Presentation slides available here

Abstract: A growing number of reports and research studies show that people discharged from hospital often experience a sense of abandonment and stigmatisation, and that they all too often receive delayed, inappropriate or unsafe care. In many ways it can seem that these people are seen as less important or valuable to the care system. This paper draws upon the work of Giorgio Agamben to understand how the social organisation of care transitions can reduce people to their ‘bare’ life thereby making possible harmful and degrading treatment. The concept of ‘bare’ life is derived from classical Greek and Roman law, and describes a ‘life’ that is deprived or stripped of the safeguards and protections that are usually accorded to citizens in the form of a ‘qualified’ life.

The findings of a two-year ethnographic study are analysed to show how some people experience hospital discharge as a vulnerable, inhumane and unsafe process, as found in their lack of involvement in care planning, delayed discharge from hospital and inappropriate and unsafe follow-on care. This is shown to stem from the way patients are constituted as ‘unknown’ and ‘ineligible’ and, in turn, professionals become ‘not responsible’ for care during and after the discharge processes. The social production of ‘bare life’ is found to be an inadvertent feature of patients ‘falling between gaps’ of different professional practices and cultures within a complex care system.

Biography: I completed my doctorate in Sociology at the University of Nottingham (2004) on ‘The social construction and control of medical errors’. I am now Professor in Organisational Sociology at Nottingham University Business School. In 2013, I founded the Centre for Health Innovation, Leadership & Learning (CHILL), which leads the Business School’s research on health systems improvement, and in the same year was awarded a Health Foundation Improvement Science Fellowship to undertake research on major system change. I am currently Associate Dean for Research within the Business School, and also the Lead for the ‘Implementing Evidence and Improvement’ Theme for NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands, and the Lead for the ‘Safer Care Systems and Transitions’ Theme for the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.

Presentation slides available here.