Laura King - senior children & young peoples' asthma practitioner, illustrator and author

In this episode of the Tiny Medical Apps / Digital Health Passport podcast, cohosts Dom Burch and Saira Arif interview Laura King, a senior children and young people's asthma practitioner for North East London. Laura shares her journey from starting in orthopaedics to becoming an asthma specialist, highlighting her initial experiences in A&E and her passion for managing long-term conditions like asthma.

Key Themes:
Career Journey and Passion for Asthma Care:

• Laura King discusses her transition from orthopaedics to asthma care, emphasising her interest in managing long-term conditions seen in A&E. She shares how her early experiences shaped her dedication to helping children and families manage asthma effectively.

Challenges and Strategies in Asthma Management:

• Laura addresses the difficulties families face, particularly in deprived areas, in managing asthma. She highlights the importance of education and empowerment, ensuring families have the knowledge to make informed decisions about their health.

Engagement and Education Techniques:

• Laura elaborates on her use of visual aids and storybooks to simplify complex asthma information for children and families. She believes in making information accessible and memorable through creative methods.

Digital Tools and Innovations:

• The podcast explores the benefits of digital tools like the Digital Health Passport, which consolidates health information in one place. Laura praises the app's ability to help families manage asthma symptoms and access essential information conveniently.

Personal Stories and Inspiration:

• Laura shares personal stories, including the loss of a close friend, which inspired her to write children's books. She also discusses how becoming a mother has driven her to push for improvements in asthma care.

Future Direction and Advice:

• Laura encourages healthcare professionals to show their passion and humanity in their work. She advises not to be afraid of being emotional and personal, as it can greatly enhance patient care.

Transcript

Dom Burch: 0:08

Welcome back to The up and away podcast with me Dom Burch and my co presenter, Saira Arif. We're delighted this week to be joined by Laura King. Now Laura is a senior children and young people's asthma practitioner for the North East London area and is a clinical nurse specialist in CYP and asthma. Laura, welcome along to Up up and away.

Laura King: 0:30

Hi, thank you for having me.

Dom Burch: 0:32

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Now, tell us a little bit about you. How did you end up doing what you do? What was your sort of journey into this area of speciality?

Laura King: 0:40

Yeah, so I'm feeling I actually listened to a podcast and I feel a little bit like an impostor because my career's so much shorter so far than some of the other people that you've, you've interviewed, you know, I am Sara Nelson fangirl. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, we all are, we all are. So I'm a sort of by trade. I'm a clinical nurse specialist. As I said, I'm a little bit more more junior in terms of time and some of the others but I qualified in 2010. And actually, my first jobs were done in Southampton in orthopedics. And then I moved into acute and emergency pediatrics quite quickly, I realized quite quickly that that was sort of the area that I really enjoyed working in. My first few jobs in fact, were in sort of children's pediatric assessment, a&e, you know, I got my first sister post in an a&e department. And I did that for a good few years, and then sort of realized that there was sort of particular conditions that I really enjoyed. So I really love diabetes, I really loved asthma. And I think the theme is sort of the long term conditions you sort of see the sharp end of it in a&e and you think, Oh, my goodness, you know, how is this happening? Why do these children keep coming in all the time? So yeah, in 2000, and gosh, 2016 I started my very first asthma job so I was really really lucky. I essentially I applied for this job thinking, ah do you know, I'm not gonna get it, but I'll just give it a go. And I'll regret it if I don't. And then and then did I got it. It was sort of a deputy nurse job over at Evelina. So guys and Tommy's I think that's where my luck started with asthma because I went to go work with a consultant called Dr. Isles. And a CNS there called Judith and I couldn't have had a better start to sort of a specialist career. That was that was really lucky. And actually, that's where I first met Sara, you know, my very first baby asthma job. Oh, my goodness. Look, all these people, you know, it was completely new world. So, that was really exciting.

Dom Burch: 2:28

Brilliant. And I love what you said about a&e. And of course, Greg who is part of tiny medical apps. Let's call it out. My big brother. He obviously is, a specialty doctor in a&e and I guess seeing you know the consequences of people who haven't been able to manage their condition. And knowing that actually, there are tools and there are ways that people can improve their own care, I guess that they might be less likely to end up in those situations where they are in a&e. And a&e is a very stressful world horrible experience, I guess, if you're asthma is being treated?

Laura King: 3:02

Ccompletely. And I think when I look back, I mean, I love I love tiny, I if you told me sort of 10 years ago, this is the job I'd be doing I would have just laughed, I just thought it was absolutely hilarious. I loved a&e I was going to be a&e until I died, I absolutely loved it. I loved the sort of the variation, I think maybe they've sort of hopefully organized chaos. But I did sort of see that and thought, gosh, these kids coming in all the time and you know, completely naively you know, thinking oh, why? Why do they keep coming out what's going on. And you know, sometimes you get people come in completely inappropriately. But actually looking as a parent now with my with my mom head on either end, you know, the children coming in really sick, you think off, they're gonna say, you know, why didn't come in sooner, they didn't understand. They didn't know it's not their fault. But on the flip side of that people coming in, for things that we perhaps might have seen as a little bit silly, or in the middle of the night, you know, think Oh, really, this could have waited, do you know what, that family was so scared that they got their child out of bed in the middle of the night and came in. As a parent now, actually, I understand that, that takes you know, they were really worried. So yes, it was quite, you know, an interesting start a really good background for asthma and actually quite a lot of certainly nurses, nurse specialists that I know. That is their background. You know, a lot of us are sort of people that have worked in urgent and emergency care and seeing the problem and fortunately we really were really interested in this thing we really want to figure out how we can help I guess, in awful term,s turn off the tap and stop these people coming in but also give them a better quality of life. You know, no child wants to be in a&e. No parent wants to be in hospital at 3am You know, worrying about the child's breathing. So I think it is quite a common thing that a lot of us sort of thing go oh yeah, let's go in to asthma, or let's go into diabetes, all that sort of specialize and try and help the families.

Saira Arif: 4:48

Obviously when I met you, Laura when I first started my tiny medical apps work. You know, my first impression or I guess, experience of what you were doing, you know on the ground was really inspirational because I think that whole ethos that you carry around helping and empathizing with kind of the fellow man or if you will, or fellow children in your case, you know, I found that it was really, really inspiring stuff you're doing on the ground. And I was wondering if like some of the things that obviously you've done is around engaging children and families in sort of asthma management? Can you share a bit of those strategies that you use? And sort of? Because remember, you're doing a lot of the patient leaflets, different languages and great work? Yeah. Can you talk about that?

Laura King: 5:29

Yeah of course. So actually, that's sort of the thing that I guess I'm most passionate about. So and that's where a lot of the reviews I've gone into that perhaps aligned to work outside of work have come into as well. So my passion is really about education, and just sort of empowering, not just children, but the parents as well, you know, obviously, it's all about the child is all about the young person, and parent, those families to actually be able to, I guess, make good choices, informed choices, but also understand how to do things like navigate the healthcare system, you know, if you don't, if you don't know how to navigate the system, as a young person, if you do not understand at the age of 14 1516, how to order your repeat medication, or how to physically go and pick it up, or how the system works, or how to consult with your doctor or how to seek help, you really don't stand a great chance of sort of managing yourself well. And similarly, if you don't understand asthma, you're very unlikely to manage it well. So when I do, and my colleague Jess, and I do a lot of training. And I think training is run through all of the jobs that I've done in asthma, quite strongly, because the understanding of asthma in this country and sort of in general is very poor. If I sort of bring up the sort of three airway pictures that that I made, because it annoyed me to keep having like branded stuff. So I made these airway airway pictures. And so if you don't understand this, the difference between well managed poorly controlled asthma and asthma attack, side by side, if you don't understand that, if you don't understand the Eskimos inflammation, then you do not stand a chance of understanding how to manage it, because actually, the crux of it. And I know it's been talked about quite a lot in the other podcast, because as I said, I'm the fan if you're listening, you know, the focus should be on the preventer. These deaths are largely preventable, and most attacks are preventable. Asthma is on the whole, not a difficult condition to manage. Obviously, there's always a severe sort of cohort, but generally speaking, it is it is basics that were perhaps sort of missing, and you know, we have these expectations of families. Oh, gosh, you know, and again, this is my judgmental pre pre motherhood, head on probably, and say, Oh, my goodness, how hard is it to give something every day? How hard is it to get an inhaler, which is really hard. It is. And, you know, some of our families, and certainly in the areas I've worked in, you know, we've sort of got this toxic combination of very poor literacy in some areas, certainly poor health literacy. We've got families who, you know, again, I've worked in largely quite deprived, amazingly diverse, but really deprived areas where actually, lots of other things come into play, you know, if you, if you're a family that's really struggling, you know, we've got a cost of living crisis, if you're a family that's struggling, or you've got other things going on, you've got a really chaotic lifestyle, through no fault of your own, actually, so might not be on your radar. It's one of those things that you know, runs through their life. But, you know, if you're worried about putting food on the table, you might forget the inhaler that morning. I once had a colleague who worked with, with gangs in southeast London, and she said, she saw this teenager, and she said, Oh, you know, why you're not taking your hell away? Not doing this, why not doing that? And, um, he just kind of went wild, but I could go out and you know, get beaten up, I could get shot tomorrow. So you know, don't really care about that, you know, it's, it was really sobering for us, because we went, Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That's, to us that dramatic example, obviously. But yeah, there were things that when we come from a place of sort of safety, and you know, relative privilege, if I'm honest, it doesn't occur to you, you know, I'm lucky I had an identity challenge. I grew up in Essex, you know, in a really safe area. But it doesn't occur to us sometimes, actually, it's very quick to judge somebody that actually, you know, you don't know what's going on in their life. And when you see them in clinic patients in clinic, quite often what I found is they'll come in, you know, families will come in, understandably quite nervous, it feels quite formal, they'll come in in their best clothes, you'll ask questions, and they'll try and answer with what they think you want to want to hear. And that's, I guess, where the sort of human part of it comes in, you know, in being somebody that they feel they can trust to tell you what's actually happening. Do you know what I'm really struggling? Or, you know, as a parent, actually, my mental health is really bad. I just don't really know what to do. But actually, I don't understand this. I do not understand it. Can you explain it to me? Because actually, sometimes it is quite hard to do that as certainly as a parent, you know, I'm a clinician and a parent. And sometimes it is quite tricky to say or do you know what I really don't know what you're talking about? I don't understand. Yeah, it's tricky. So sometimes we do have to go in a little bit gently. Yeah. And sort of do the whole thing where you say no, sometimes they Do you say, Oh, we can do it, just do it, we're just gonna get back to the beginning again. And actually 99% of the consultations that I have, when I'm in clinics or with families, it'll be huge. You know what, you probably know this already. But let's just start again, because you know, I'm a bit, I'm a bit annoying, I'm a bit nerdy, we're just going to start from the beginning. And I just sort of frame it as that, oh, there's no judgement, if you don't understand it, understand, we're gonna start from the beginning anyway. And a lot of the time, you sort of see that, that moment where the cogs kind of turn, or that or the thing clicks into place in the brain, and they go, Oh, my God, I had no idea. And then what quite often happens, especially, obviously, both parents come to consultations, and I don't want to put it all on mums. But sometimes it is a mum in the room. I've had lots of parents get really upset and say, Oh, my goodness, especially for Tots had a really difficult time or being really sick or being in hospital. And I've had parents get really upset and say, Oh, my goodness, I feel awful, you know, crying, saying we feel I feel terrible. I just didn't know. And then you kind of end up wheeling out a pep talk to say, No, it's not your fault. You didn't know it. And quite often it's you know, that's the mum guilt. That's the mum guilt talking, you didn't know, you can't do what you don't know. But let's start again, let's start from the beginning. And we'll make sure you feel really confident when you leave my room. So yeah, I think there's there is something about sort of the way you approach things and the way you sort of treat people, what

Dom Burch: 11:14

sort of tools do you use them to help both engagement sort of mum and dad or mum and younger people? I mean, I know you've, you've talked a bit about these illustrations that you've done. So what just sort of bring that to life for us, in fact, this is your moment to tell the world about your amazing superpower of life, actually taking what can be quite challenging and complex information for people to really get their heads around, and simplifying it in such a way, but so that it's impactful. It's memorable. And actually, it can help to educate and change behavior. Because that's, you know, ultimately, that's what we're after. Right?

Laura King: 11:48

Absolutely. And, you know, it sounds really cliche, but knowledge is power. A lot of the time, as I said, we're quite quick to judge people for not knowing something that actually, they may have seen 10 different people about asthma. And actually, no one's ever told them what it is, quite often, I used to see, say children, teenagers come in, and they'd be sort of 14 1516, you know, about to enter sort of the adult world in terms of healthcare, and they've been diagnosis, they want to know 345. And everyone's just assumed they know. So whatever tells them, and it is quite, it's quite tricky to go, do you know what they actually they said, they don't know. And that's where kind of the tools come out. That's where the resources come out. I personally, I'm a visual learner, I need to see something, to learn it and really, really sort of take it in. And I think that's something that when I sort of started doing asthma, I sort of realized that a lot of our resources are things we've made, or things we've picked up, or sometimes they're things that come from drug companies, and they have logos all over them. And he's got a bit stubborn to be honest. And I decided to draw my own airway model. So it's literally a cross section, we all have them every every asthma nurse will have exactly the same resource in various various forms, it's literally the three cross sections of the airway next to each other, you can use them as a really excellent visual resource to say, you know, if you're in enough space, this is what's happening. And you know, I did make it really nice and like, inflamed, there's a bit of a knot in there, it's a bit gross on purpose. The middle one is this is well controlled estimate, this is what we're aiming for. And then you've got one that's somewhere in the middle, what used to annoy me about resources, especially the cross section airway ones, is that you'd have the sort of three and you know, as I said, we all have the same thing. And you'd have on the left, you'd have not asthma, and then you'd have asthma in the middle, and then you'd have asthma attack. And actually what we want is what controlled asthma because that's what we're in for, you know, mildly inflamed asthma, because that's when we can change it. And that's when we want our families to actually notice the niggly symptoms and seek help. And then a massive attack on the right, which is actually it's a failure, the failure of us as health professionals versus the teams, you know, to keep that child safe. So as I said, I'm quite a stubborn human. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna I'm just gonna do it myself basically. And you know, again that that's something that features in the booklet we've got a pen network and information booklet that's goodness me How long has it taken to make this part of baby two years in the making, which sounds a bit ridiculous but when you consider sort of all of the patient information groups, you know, getting feedback getting comps, you know, all of those that's on board, we're really, really proud of it. But we really wanted to make information that people will a understood because the National Reading ages eight, and that is quite challenging for some of my colleagues who are used to writing you know, very long words, that very eloquent, but it's not necessarily helpful for some of our families to get started a few years ago when I was actually in a different job in the same network, doing some sort of a job that did involve, like a small scale change, really, it was it was it was coming into a trust. We're actually they've had a really rough time with asthma. They've had, they've had a few deaths. You know, it's all in public domain that had a few deaths. They had a recognition 28 And I came in as sort of the nurse that has come in to sort of be their first asthma nurse, look at the whole system and go, right what what needs changing. And what I found very well meaning don't get me wrong very well meaning is what I found was I went to these two hospitals that were in the trust. And I did a little treasure hunt. And I went to the wards and I went to a&e, and a bit the basket. And I picked up all of the bits of paper, about literally, it was about all the bits of paper to do with asthma in these in these various departments in these hospitals, and kind of came back to this office as as this sort of new nurse and thought, Oh, my goodness, and I sort of laid it all out and thought, jeez, that is a lot of different information, written with incredibly good intentions, don't get me wrong, per se working in the department going, Oh, we really want to help. Let's make a leaflet, let's make a whatever. And I thought, you know, we can't get it right, the families don't stand a chance, you know, that these this particular place. And we find that in northeast London, actually, in general, we have so many hospitals in such a small geographical area, that we do have children that will you know, depending on whether they're at mums, or dads or nouns or at school will go to different hospitals, they could go to either, or they could be transferred from one to the other, if there's no beds, and actually, depending on where they go home from or depend on the information they get. And like I said, it wasn't necessarily bad information, it was just not consistent. And we know that, you know, you have to be told things seven times to take it in. So why don't we make it all the same?

Saira Arif: 16:18

It's really important that having good information at hand, because, you know, we often I guess we we miss out on giving good information. We think that you know, the basic information that's out there is enough, but actually, you know, everyone learns very differently. You know, and everyone's mind is very different. So, I mean, I'm just looking back about my, when I was diagnosed with asthma, I was four years old, and I didn't think there was visual aids or visual illustrations about asthma and lung health looked like and, you know, my parents did the best they could from the knowledge they had. But had I had illustrations that you you spoke about, just making things very clear. For the parents, I think my son would have been much different when I was when I was a child. But it is important to talk about how how you break down these kind of complex or abstract issues into very simple visual aids for people. I think it's really, really great what you're doing. And I also wanted to touch on actually, Laura, some of the work that you've done on storybooks for children, because it's kind of similar, isn't it? I know you've written a series of story books for children. Can you tell us a bit more about those books? And what kind of inspired you to create them? Yeah,

Laura King: 17:24

so it is a slightly convoluted story. But essentially, I am. I've always written actually, I've not ever really told anyone that much because I was embarrassed about it. But I think I've given up being cool a long time ago. I I've always written illustrations a little bit newer, which probably taught from the books, but I've always written and I a few years ago, I completely in, you know, very difficult time in my life, wrote a book about my friends and my friend and my lovely friend died a few years ago, she had she had cancer. And she was sort of like a bit like my big sis, she were not related. But she was that my big sister. And you know, she used to, she does, I think I think she was actually dyslexic, which I never knew. And she used to sort of, you know, get me to read her things. And she it was sort of a long standing joke between us that, you know, I was a massive bookworm. And when she found out that she was she was dying. One of my friends suggested getting a little device called, I think it was called the outer peritonei box, or both where you can record stories. And that became sort of something we did together. I sort of find stories, and she'd record them. When she died. It was a little bit like her like, she was quite short. So she's got mostly just got mostly big sister. She's also now she was like she was a children's hospice nurse. You can imagine she was quite white blonde. Bossy as a friend very straight to the point. And she I found myself in the order of service as giving a eulogy for Oh, my goodness, where the hell do I start? And I wrote it, and I wrote it, and I wrote it, and it was all wrong. And then I ended up, I won't use that I won't use the word I use because it's a bit scary. But I thought, You know what, I'll just I'll just do it. And I wrote, I wrote hers, I wrote her story is a rhyming children's story. For her daughter's not thinking anything would come of it. Anyway, long story short, her wonderful support group locally, actually funded me making it into a real book, you know, I was thinking I'm gonna sell it, tape it together for her children, you know, just get up, get get the Blue Peter skills out. And they helped me make it a real book. And I'm so proud of it. I mean, the, you know, it's clearly made by somebody that that's the first time but I'm really proud of it. And it's sort of be it's helped quite a lot of families, which she was all about. Anyway, so I did that. And then I sort of did that you know, as you do, because why not during a pandemic on maternity leave, you know, grieving really helped me out and then I kind of went back to work. And I made these illustrations for the airways because I just got stuck and I thought, I'm just gonna do it myself. Now, I know I can do it. I'm gonna do it. And then I thought, actually, if I can write a book about something really, really painful, I could actually write a book about something I I might know something about. And there are various stories that we use when we when we speak to children, especially. But often, as we said, you know, you're saying things for the child, the child might actually understand that you're doing for parents. And we sort of use these analogies to explain quite abstract ideas like airway inflammation is the abstract concept, especially for young child, but you know, for some, for some people, especially when we're thinking about people who are perhaps neurodiverse, or have ASD, you know, abstract concepts can be quite difficult to understand. And we find ourselves using these stories, one of which, so Dr. Oz, who, as I said, was my very first consult with an asthma, he used to explain oral steroids versus inhaled steroids. So as we all know, lots of families and parents especially really worry about steroids, because there's sort of this concept that, you know, the children are gonna turn into a miniature bodybuilders and be it'd be monsters. That's, that's kind of a very old, very old sort of thing. But it is very, still very prevalent. Yeah, with parents being really worried. So he used to tell the story. And I used to think, oh, here we go. Again, here's the story. Actually, I found myself then using it quite a lot later in my career. So he says, oh, imagine that your lungs in an asthma attack or like a forest fire, you know, you see on the news, these big forest fires in Australia, you see on the news, the whole it, I forget what the name is of the thing that the helicopter coming in and dumping all that water, you know, tons of water on the fire, and you have to use all that water to put it out, you know, that's, that's insane. And then you've got, you know, you see the farmer on the edge, just chucking a bucket of water on the edge. And he used to say to the families, that the huge loss of water, that's like, you're almost steroids. In an emergency, yes, you need it. But actually, if we kept things like control that little farm on the side of the bucket, it's like your enhanced opioids that could keep things you know, keep things settled. And it's such an amazing visual to use to kind of show that the difference between the two, because parents quite often, in my experience anyway, they think they're the same. And that they're just not see that visual is just really important to kind of show, like I say, really abstract concept. And sort of, it's all about risk. It's all about relative risk and keeping your child safe. But by telling the story, I think you almost removed the element of people feeling judged, because you're saying actually think about it this way, I could talk about them forever. But there's, there's, there's different ways to describe things that are they do lend themselves very well to a creative story. And yeah, that's where the books came from. So they're sort of on the basics, really. And that's my passion. But what we call the brilliant basics, with the idea that you are arming people with the information in a way they can understand to then mean that they can look after themselves and their children more effectively.

Dom Burch: 22:38

And you talked earlier about this sort of thing about navigating, I mean, you know, navigating the health service, navigating the system, being able to, I think you said order meds, consult your doctor seek help. So let's pivot a little bit then into the digital tools that obviously that we were one of right, we're not the only one but but you've had real success in helping young people in their families, I guess, use something like the digital health passport just to help them navigate that their journey and to help them stay on top of things like symptoms and tracking things. And pollen. Just talk a little bit about that. Because I think the work you've been doing is been really, really leading edge, it's really, really helped dozens and dozens of people manage their own symptoms and manage their own condition. Yeah, so

Laura King: 23:23

I think the thing I really like about the app, you know, in general, is the fact that it's all in one place. I think we quite often and you know, I've alluded to this with the paper, the paper things, it's no good giving someone 20 Different leaflets, you know, I have a child who's six, who has a book that has a school bag full of bits of paper, you know, you know where they're gonna go, they're just gonna end up going probably in the bin to business, apparently. But yeah, probably in the bin. The idea of having it, you know, on an app having all of this information, and all of this, I guess, the, you know, the record of your own health as well, when you look at the symptom mapping, and the asthma plan being on there, I don't have it all in one place. It's just, it's just kind of, I don't know what like, it's just, it's just obvious that you want to have it all together, you know, our young people on the whole, not everyone, but pretty much almost all of our families and children will have a home, very small minority group that don't but you know, most people will to be able to sort of say to these families, you know, for example, you know, that you can actually you know, we're giving you a paper plan, actually I quite often don't know quite often give them a digital copy instead because again, I've got the kid with a bit background for the taper. It can be on here because staffer picture we can upload it you can have it with you all the time you can you can show a friend, you know where to look for it if you're poorly, you know, school can No grandma can know where the information is. And then you've got sort of the aspect of sort of the symptom mapping and the the pollen and air quality alert system which again, I just think it's fantastic. You know, there are apps for all of those things. If you look, if you look quickly at you know, the App Store Roll the Play Store, that to have it all together, I think is the empowering thing. But I have looked at a fair few apps, and I've actually been asked to a few apps in my time. And I do find it really helpful. I think also knowing that the people who have made it, Greg, as a clinician, I think makes a huge difference to me as somebody sort of settling in on whatever kind of encouraging people to use it. I quite often actually, when I do talk about it in consultations, and you know, I tend to because it's just fantastic. It's I quite often bring it in when I talk about triggers natural quiet pollen and air quality, because for me, that's one of the really great aspects of the the fact that he's actually going to preempt you, that your trigger might be sort of causing you trouble. The plan, I think, is just a no brainer, having the plan on there, which again, is great, because we again, can feel confident that our families and our young people have it with them all the time. I think the learning aspect for me again, is you know, that that young person, my old apparently even might not be somebody that would necessarily even know where to go to get information, I think we assume quite often that people know and you know, they don't, the young person can can actually, you know, on their phone, you know, they start scrolling or you know, things up saying you know pollen or quality or whatever they want to learn about us or they've got a question or they want to sort of, in their own time, have a look, you know, it's there. For them. It's a really good opportunity.

Dom Burch: 26:20

Like I said earlier as well, you know that thing about sometimes you have to see the same or hear the same or read the same information seven times before it really sinks in, and been able to sort of do that on demand, and pick up those sort of tips, you know, really sort of bite sized tips, and also know that there's peers, of people like you, right? Why is social media so popular? I mean, so talk about this all the time, right? And you know why young people are entertained on Tik Tok, because it's people like them who they can, you know, engage with who they recognize who, frankly, they'll, they'll trust because you know, a young person talking to another young person who's got the same thing as them. He doesn't always want to talk about it at school, you don't want it to be like a badge you carry around, I have asthma. It's like, no, no, no, it's part of me. But it's not like doesn't define me, or it shouldn't define me. And actually, by using some of these tools, and being more aware of your own symptoms, and your own personal triggers. And that how of having a really positive impact on people's well being as well, but how to actually just not be quite as stressed each day, because it can be really stressful if you're walking out into a polluted world or a world that might trigger your condition.

Laura King: 27:26

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's really empowering to be able to have that in their pocket.

Dom Burch: 27:32

Yeah. What's what's next for you? And this sort of teams you work with? And I'm sort of imagining, right, there's loads of, I mean, you are one of a kind, or I have to say, but there's, there's loads of you out there in the NHS across the across the country, what would your message be to your colleagues who perhaps haven't gone down the same route as you've gone down? Like, you know, if you were going to sort of signpost, them, what would be the things you'd want them to know?

Laura King: 27:57

One thing I guess, is that when I look at my career so far, you know, I'm 35, I've got a long time ago, I've in this sort of strategic role, but I never expected to be in never, ever and, you know, I am very new to it. Oh, my goodness, the last 18 months have been such an amazing challenge, I can be wrong, I've really got my teeth into it. But it's a whole new world like looking at things like commissioning and services. And you know, the bits that perhaps, I think especially first you get a little bit of insight into the habit system works, but you don't really see it unless it's you ask him for something when you look at sort of the inner workings of the NHS and what actually leads to sort of decisions being made. It's quite frightening actually, to kind of look at it in that way. But in terms of like, people, people like me, you know, I'm an A specialist that, you know, was very lucky and got this job is to not be afraid to sort of show your passion and not be afraid to be human. I've worked with people in the past who are fantastic, goodness, me amazing, amazing clinicians, but almost have this sort of worry that they have to have this professional persona, and sort of not show emotion and not show personality. And they worry about that, you know, obviously they have personalities, they're amazing humans that I think there's something in that in actually showing it showing your what you're interested in and showing actually really do feel passionately about, for example, education, access to information, you know, some of the projects I'm doing at the moment and cyber alluded to the booklet, you know, we've got this booklet, we've now put it in 14 languages. We've now got animations that are bringing these, you know, really simply worded face it that into into families hands, I guess digitally, if I hadn't sort of been a little bit belligerent, and sort of said, You know what, I'm gonna put it out there. This is what I really believe would help our families we cannot keep banging on about people doing things like taking medicines and doing x y Zed without educating them. It's not fair. It's just not fair on our families. And actually, there's a lot of talk about people being hard to engage. And I think I've worked with for the last few years opposite. In fact, I've worked with what lots of people would call how to engage populations, how to engage people how to get families, actually, I've also seen a lot of people who I really respect and role model and say, well, actually, you know, maybe we're just have to reach, maybe our services are just not easy to find maybe your information is just not right for them, maybe we're actually making it really difficult for our most vulnerable families to look after themselves. And I think, again, you know, it's one of the things that I really strongly believe in that we should be actually looking what people want a need, rather than assuming, assuming what we should be doing. So I think I just say to people, you know, follow your passion, don't be afraid to you know, put a perhaps maybe slightly abstract talk or creative kind of solution or idea out there. Because actually, you would be the first person that sort of it, you might be the only person that's in that particularly nice position to be able to implement that change. And, you know, if it's, if it's a rubbish idea, we're just not going to walk. You know, you've also got teams around you, that will that will help you sort of look at on what you can do better.

Saira Arif: 31:02

At least you've tried it as well, that's the main thing as well, isn't it? You've tried the idea when the trier

Dom Burch: 31:09

Well, Laura, we could chat to you all day long. And I think I'm gonna have to anoint you a friend of the podcast, which basically means we're going to get you back on, because there's so much more we could talk about, but we're almost out of time. Before I press the stop button, is there anything that we haven't asked you that you really wanted to say?

Laura King: 31:26

I think one of the things I didn't want to say was that, you know, it's certainly in my pouch, but nationally, you know, children are dying preventively. And I think one of the things that really influenced my time my passion or my maybe belligerence kind of just heightened once I became a mom, but I think I kind of came back to work after having my my, my eldest son went fairly quickly into a job the job that was as a responsive a regulation 28. And I sort of just looked at the this, you know, the situation I looked at all this paperwork, and I looked at all of the you know, turnabout desks, of course, because, you know, they were, they were hideous, hideous, some of them were sort of made front page news. And I sort of thought to myself, as a parent, as a mum, if I was that child's parent, and I was in my position, which is very privileged to be able to come in and implement change, even in a small way, you know, I would want that person to do absolutely everything in their power, even if it means, you know, looking a bit silly, you know, people thinking I've got up to now, or, you know, maybe putting off, you know, sort of joining it in a very professional way and say, Actually, we need to, we need to make the change, because it's for the safety of our children. If I was that parent, I would want the person to do absolutely everything they could possibly do to stop it happening again. And I think that's one of the things that's really driven me.

Dom Burch: 32:41

Well, Laura, thank you so much for coming on to up, up and away Laura King, who's Senior children, young people's asthma practitioner for North East London, it's been a pleasure. If anyone's listening and wants to get in touch with Laura, you can get in touch with us or you can find her on LinkedIn. But also, if you're listening and thinking, Gosh, I want to take part in our pop on away, then please don't hesitate. We're desperate to talk to more professionals and thought leaders just like Laura, Laura, you are a absolute force of nature. And I want to say this to you. You're inspiring. And we really, really admire all of the things you're doing and all of the amazing work that you're doing and the illustrations and the books and everything else. And so we just want to say we put you up on a pedestal you don't need to be thinking you're looking up to anyone else. We are looking up to you, Laura King, it's been absolutely brilliant chatting to you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks, Laura. It's a pleasure and we'll get you back soon. But for the meanwhile, thank you so much for coming on to Up up and away. Thank you you've been listening to the Up up and away podcast with me DOM Burch and my co presenter. Saira Arif. If you're interested in being a guest, please get in touch via tiny medical apps.com Or you can find the podcast on digital health passport.co or just google plus you'll find us somewhere