Joan Pons Laplana
Joan Pons Laplana is a proud Nurse, a change agent and a Care Maker.
He is on a mission to turn the healthcare system upside down and empower frontline staff & patients to lead together.
Joan is also a Dignity Champion, a Dementia Friend and a PFD Champion. He is involved in promoting Equality and Diversity across all his activities.
Recently he has also become an ambassador for the Mary Seacole statue appeal and very recently has join the HSC Voices Core Team.
Joan became a Hubble (Change Day volunteer) and a Care Maker for the chance to encourage other frontline staff to make a difference and to convince them that you don’t need permission to initiate change. As a Nurse he tries to transfer his passion and ignite other people’s hearts, and hopefully inspire courage for others to take the first step to try to improve the place they work.
He is very active in Social Media and in 2014 won the Nursing Times Tweeter Nurse of the Year. You can follow him at @thebestjoan
Person-centered care is his passion. Making a difference is what motivates him to get up every morning and go to work with a smile. Honesty and transparency are also vital and they are part of his core values.
Joan is an example of the new sort of nurse entrepreneur who never stops coming up with ideas. The difference between him and those who just talk about new ways of doing things is that he is unafraid to change his role, job and even location. He just gets on and delivers.
Heart and voice of a hopeful nurse with Joan Pons Laplana #isharehope Episode 81
Summary: Joan’s answer to the five questions! Listen to the full conversation on the player above; also available on iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud.
Question 1: How do you define hope or what is your favorite quote about hope?
Joan Pons Laplana:
“Hope is stronger than fear.”
If you can give hope to people, you can take them with you and you can be a lot happier. When you have hope, you can be yourself, you can inspire other people.
Question 2: Who has shared the most hope with you?
Joan Pons Laplana:
The person who has helped me to do my transformation and who believed in me and told me I had potential – Jackie Lynton, the head of NHS Improvement Quality.
I got in contact through this network and she told me about being yourself and don’t be afraid to have changes and challenge the system, but also she taught me how to do it the right way without being seen as a rebel and a troublemaker.
Jackie Lynton gave me hope on being me because she believed in me. For a lot of years I was lost in the system and she, in a way, rescued me and showed me I had a lot of things going for me. That was the beginning of my journey, a journey that has taken me to amazing places with the hope of making a difference.
Question 3: How have you used hope to make it through a difficult time in your life?
Joan Pons Laplana:
Three and a half years ago, I was at a very low point. I left nursing, I left the profession. I was in my late 30s and I said well, what am I going to do with my life? I wasn’t happy at work, I wasn’t happy at home, I was miserable. I met Jackie and she told me that I had great potential and I should believe in myself.
That transformation, it’s not like you switch a light and suddenly you believe in yourself and everything. It takes a lot of time. Every morning, I used to spend 5 minutes being quiet and have one positive thought and imagined what I wanted my day to look like. In a way, I changed my mindset from a negative and gradually to a positive. I have created a habit and now people say that I have a bouncy personality.
It comes with risks, but I will never go back to living in fear. I was living in fear and I’m a lot happier now living in hope because I can feel life around me. You only live once and if you spend your life living in fear and being miserable, you waste your life.
Question 4: How are you sharing hope today?
Joan Pons Laplana:
I get involved in a lot of projects. I use lots of social media, I do a lot of articles. I write opinion articles that more and more magazines are publishing. I always say what I think should be the solution. I don’t criticize what it is. I’ll say what my opinion is on how we can make it better. I’m part of the NHS Change Day who encourage other people to do some change. I’m also part of the Care Maker’s group – we are the ambassadors of the 6Cs. The 6Cs is an initiative from the chief nurse of England which is basically the values every nurse should have that is Care, Compassion, Commitment, Competence, Courage and I always forget the 6th one (Communication). I do a lot of talking to people and gather thoughts of different people. I’m like a sponge. I absorb a lot of knowledge and then I analyze it and then I create my own vision. I like to listen to people.
I don’t know anybody who had succeeded without failing. Failing is a thing, in our society, that we see as very negative. I think we need to change that concept. Failing should be celebrated and learnt from. When you learn from it then you succeed. Great examples are:
Michael Jordan – He was not good enough for the college team. What did he do? He trained again and became the best player in the world.
Walt Disney – He was fired from his job because they said he didn’t have imagination.
Oprah Winfrey – She was fired from the television because they told her she didn’t have the face for television.
Albert Einstein – When he was in school they told him he’d never achieve anything and now he’s a genius.
People need to see failure as a part of life and learn from it.
Question 5: How should I (the listener) begin to grow in hope or share hope today?
Joan Pons Laplana:
(1) Have a positive thought every day. Start with yourself.
(2) Show by example what the people can do.
(3) Persevere.
(4) Lose the fear of failing.
(5) Celebrate everything that’s happening in your life.
