The Inspire Improvement Fellowship
The Inspire Improvement Fellowship is an annual programme. It is designed for nurses and midwives leading clinical teams in any setting in health and social care for example care homes, community, secure services, schools, acute, primary care anywhere in the UK.
The twelve-month programme is formed of two blocks of online learning, one in autumn and one in spring (one afternoon per week). In the summer, there is a face-to-face learning and celebration two-day event. It also includes online/telephone coaching and a small bursary.
It is practice-based – you learn in and from your own practice benefitting from FoNS’s hugely successful approach to learning and development.
The Inspire Improvement Fellowship 2023 is now closed for applications
Applicants should:
- Be a clinical nurse/midwife leader, for example a ward sister/matron, community team leader or care home manager from any area of health and social care in the UK (this includes health visiting, primary care, public health)
- Hold a professional UK registration with the NMC
- Be both leading a nursing and/or care team and providing frontline nursing care
- Be the direct line manager for the members of the team
- Be able to commit to the 12-month programme including learning and development sessions
We welcome applications from people from diverse backgrounds in any health or social care setting (UK wide)
Next round: please sign up to our newsletter for updates on all our programme offerings
Competence and confidence in using new leadership skills, methods and approaches
- ‘Gave me the confidence to take creative risks’
- ‘This is a game changer. I’m so glad I did it and feel more supported now than at any time in my nursing career’
- ‘I can’t quantify the impact it’s had on my life. The change I have seen in nursing and the culture of care is staggering. The unit has embraced this to such a degree it has changed lives: The lives of staff and service users’
- ‘Given me the confidence to step back and ask staff how they can help rather than me fix it’
Initiated new workplace activities as a result of the learning from the workshops
- ‘Really chuffed at the positive feedback that was received from my away day today! Wouldn’t have dreamed of facilitating this 12 months ago’
- ‘I decided to take a different approach’
- ‘For me as a manager, the experience has been an eyeopener. It is the first time I have asked my team members to articulate their feelings and in doing so I have had some honest and frank conversations with different members of staff’
- ‘I could start to see people changing their mindset after only spending a day together using creativity and new approaches to participation and collaboration’
Transformed leadership approaches resulting in other positive outcomes
- ‘The Inspire Improvement Fellowship has fundamentally changed how I practice on a day-to-day basis. My colleagues have commented on how much better they feel things are in the workplace. We are closer as a team, more cohesive, more supportive and more productive’
- ‘We have now moved from 40% vacancy to predicted 9% vacancy rate in January which is very exciting’
- ‘I think since the FoNS Inspire Improvement programme, it is more apparent that you have a democratic leadership style where you promote open communication and you focus on your team as individuals with different skills and personality and how to get the best out of your team by nurturing them’ [senior colleague]
Inspire Improvement Fellows talk about their experiences:
| Morisenuola Ladele | Stavroula Chante | Sian Perry | Morag Millar |
| Chloe Herbert | Sheeba Jefferson | Isobel McDowell | Pamela Galloway |
| Corinne Fallows | Kim Thomas |