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A Craft from Oxytocin-Learning · 36 lessons

The Investigation

A year inside one NHS investigation, told from every chair. Efua, your guide, tells the story in six minutes.

One night on Ward 9

On the night of Tuesday 6 October, Ward 9 begins one registered nurse short. At 23:15 another is moved to the emergency department. Observations begun at 02:10 are entered at 04:35, incomplete. By the morning a patient is in critical care, and a staff nurse from Ghana, Grace Boateng, is about to become the subject of an investigation.

Two nurses at the lamplit nurses' station on Ward 9, one holding the allocation sheet.
Ward 9, 19:50
Karen at her kitchen table late at night, still in her coat, a lamp on and a mug in front of her.
Karen, 23:10
Ruth at her desk in the deputy director's office early in the morning, papers in front of her.
Ruth, 07:30
Grace in her dressing gown at the kitchen table, writing in a notebook beside a teapot.
Grace, 08:10

A year, from every chair

The story spans a year. Across 36 lessons you follow it through particular days and turning points, moving between chairs and returning to familiar people as the case unfolds: the nurse in charge, the patient's daughter, the deputy director, the investigator, the companion, Grace herself. Most lessons offer two episodes from different chairs; the final lesson brings them together before returning the question to you.

You make decisions with the information the person in that chair had, read what reached the file, and hear what another account adds. You practise the questions, records and responses that help an account reach the people responsible for acting on it, beside the real process, the law and the evidence. The year asks whose account is believed, whose uncertainty becomes a concern, and how organisational decisions can operate unequally.

The year in five acts

Act I · October · Lessons 1 to 6

The night and the file opens

A night on Ward 9 goes wrong, and within the month a nurse is under investigation and a family is waiting for answers.

  1. Tuesday 6 OctoberLesson 1Twenty-three fifteen
  2. Wednesday 7 OctoberLesson 2What Karen was told
  3. Tuesday 13 OctoberLesson 3Two processes
  4. Wednesday 14 OctoberLesson 4Dear Ms Boateng
  5. Tuesday 20 OctoberLesson 5Her first words
  6. Tuesday 20 OctoberLesson 6The room

Act II · Late October to December · Lessons 7 to 14

What is in the file

Statements are taken, a handover sheet sits in the wrong file, and a draft report is written before Christmas.

  1. Wednesday 21 OctoberLesson 7Collected Thursdays
  2. Tuesday 27 OctoberLesson 8The kitchen table
  3. Wednesday 4 NovemberLesson 9Thirty-one
  4. Friday 13 NovemberLesson 10Days
  5. Thursday 26 NovemberLesson 11The family meeting
  6. Friday 4 DecemberLesson 12The draft
  7. Wednesday 16 DecemberLesson 13Mercy
  8. Thursday 24 DecemberLesson 14Christmas Eve

Act III · January to February · Lessons 15 to 20

The hearing

A disciplinary panel sits in Seminar Room 2, and has to decide what it can fairly decide on the file in front of it.

  1. Wednesday 13 JanuaryLesson 15The bundle
  2. Tuesday 19 JanuaryLesson 16The hearing: morning
  3. Tuesday 19 JanuaryLesson 17The hearing: afternoon
  4. Monday 1 FebruaryLesson 18Adjourned
  5. Thursday 11 FebruaryLesson 19The second statement
  6. Tuesday 23 FebruaryLesson 20The outcome

Act IV · March to June · Lessons 21 to 28

The regulator, and speaking up

A letter arrives that the trust did not send, a daughter and a nurse meet, and people on Ward 9 decide whether to speak up.

  1. Tuesday 2 MarchLesson 21A letter from the NMC
  2. Wednesday 24 MarchLesson 22You came back
  3. Thursday 8 AprilLesson 23The Guardian
  4. Tuesday 13 AprilLesson 24Findings
  5. Thursday 22 AprilLesson 25Three wards
  6. Wednesday 12 MayLesson 26The backlog
  7. Thursday 27 MayLesson 27Case examiners
  8. Sunday 6 JuneLesson 28What Grace did not say

Act V · July to October · Lessons 29 to 36

The system changes, or does not

A year later, you return to the ward, reread the file, and consider what can last beyond the people who made it possible.

  1. Thursday 8 JulyLesson 29The board paper
  2. Tuesday 20 JulyLesson 30Betty's question
  3. Wednesday 11 AugustLesson 31Who enters the process
  4. Tuesday 24 AugustLesson 32New rules
  5. Monday 13 SeptemberLesson 33A nurse from Lagos
  6. Tuesday 5 OctoberLesson 34The anniversary night
  7. Wednesday 6 OctoberLesson 35The whole file
  8. Wednesday 6 OctoberLesson 36I am because we are

What a place holds

  • 36 lessons, each one day of the year, from a different chair
  • Episodes where your choices change what happens, and what the documents later say
  • The documents each day produced, to read as the people in the story read them
  • The real process, law and research beside the story, read at source and listed in every lesson
  • The other chairs: what the same day looked like to the people around you, in their own voices
  • The quiet sound of each place, if you want it: a ward at night, a bus in the rain, a front room with a clock
  • Your file: what you have written and said, lesson by lesson, in one private place
  • Efua beside you throughout, and nothing here is a test you can fail
  • A certificate when you finish, which anyone you show it to can check

Every person, ward and event is a fictional composite. The guidance, law and research are real, read at source, and listed in each lesson. You can work with the fictional case throughout; personal disclosure is never required. This course follows a patient's deterioration, an investigation of a nurse, and racism at work. You can stop at any point, and each lesson says where to turn.

When you finish

Finish, and pass it on

When you have finished all 36 lessons, you can give one person a place on How Truth Travels, our course in receiving difficult truth: eight modules, around three hours. Give it to someone you want to thank, or someone you think it would help. Add a note if you like. You send the link however you choose, and we never ask who it is for.

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Founding price until 31 December 2026. From 1 January 2027 the standard price applies.

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