By: 17 February 2020
Could you be the new face of the Association for Perioperative Practice?

Does your perioperative team go above and beyond to encourage good communication and create a positive culture within the operating theatre? Is everyone within the team treated equally and included no matter where they are within their career?

If yes, you could be in with the chance of winning a safer surgery goody bag and becoming the face of the UK’s leading membership organisation for theatre practitioners, The Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP).

As part of its new Caring for those who Care campaign, the association is giving seven lucky perioperative teams the chance to represent what true teamwork within the perioperative environment means, by being the face of their social media.

The seven lucky winners will be the teams who submit images that best represent what an inclusive perioperative team is and provide the evidence of their team’s efforts to create a positive working environment.

The images from the winning teams will become the cover photo for The Association for Perioperative Practice’s social media accounts for one month in the run-up to the 2020 AfPP Annual Conference in September – where all entries will also be available to view.

What’s more, one overall winner will be announced at the conference and their image will then become the face of AfPP for the rest of the year.

The idea arose after reports of increasing communication issues within the theatre environment began to circulate throughout 2019.

The association wanted to devise a task that would encourage the entire team to come together with the same goal, and also reward those who have taken steps to make the theatre environment a nice place to work.

Louise Ashton, marketing lead at the association said:” Our experience shows how invaluable sharing ideas and initiatives can be to patient safety, so we wanted to do something special that would showcase those teams that are going the extra mile.

“Whether it’s a weekly coffee meeting in the canteen, or a more extravagant idea, if a team is working together to create a better culture, we want to see.

“Our new ‘Caring for those who Care’ campaign is a really important part of our marketing activity this year and encouraging good communication within teams and creating a positive working environment is a fundamental part of this.”

Dawn Stott, CEO of the association added:”AfPP is all about networking and sharing best practice and this project is a unique way to showcase great initiatives that make certain teams stand out.  I would encourage any team to send in their photos together with their story, no matter how trivial you might think it is, it may have a massive impact on others.”

To find out how to enter, please visit https://www.afpp.org.uk/news/face_of_afpp_competition.