Hello my name is Wendy McIntosh. My role is Acting Area Director Safety and Quality for country health in Western Australia.

The planets aligned for me this year.
I recently joined Twitter and saw what an amazing space it is for finding inspiration and sharing ideas and resources. At the same time I registered for the virtual School for Health and Care Radicals to develop my skills as a change agent. I began to see Tweets about Change Day Australia and thought "I should promote this".

The key message I have taken from the School for Health and Care Radicals is "Change starts with me". If I wanted to see others embrace Change Day I knew I had to take some steps towards that goal.

Our health service covers a vast area of 2.5 million square km. This presents particular challenges for communicating information to staff and engaging others in change.

To be the change I wanted to see I started to create a pledge tree in the office where I work. We later transplanted it to a higher traffic area by the printer to create more of a focus for conversation.

I started by sending emails to the networks and strong ties I work most closely with and also mentioned Change Day during face to face conversations. I asked everyone to tell 5 others about Change Day to spread the message further.

In approaching our leadership and governance groups I framed my message around the idea that all staff, no matter what their role could make a difference and that in providing their support for Change Day they would send a positive signal to other staff.

Having gained the support of the leadership groups a global email message went out to all staff with the incentive of a prize for the most creative pledge tree.
I tried to recruit other champions to spread the word and create pledge trees in their work area. This fabulous tree was created by Jo Muir and others in the central office safety & quality team.

Jo pledged to reward evidence of outstanding service to the community with cupcakes. Here the Executive Director Nursing and Midwifery Services and some of her team receive cupcakes for facilitating the inward transfer of rural patients requiring tertiary care and the return of patients from metropolitan to country sites as part of the transition of metropolitan services for the opening of a new WA tertiary hospital.

Sitting in a corporate office it's hard to see or get to hear about change that's happening on the ground. I started following up staff who had registered pledges on the Change Day website. Today I recieved a photo of this wonderful plege tree at one of our regional hospitals and thought "wow" the message is getting out there!

The Twitter and Change Day communities are really supportive and encouraging. With this and the support from within our health service I don't feel like I am doing this alone.

I made my pledge in mid-January. What have I learnt in 6 weeks?
There are a lot of creative people out there - you just have to tap into that.
The power of multiples - do something towards your goal every day.
Start earlier and engage others across the organisation to work with from the start.