How safe are clinical systems - report on the evidence by The Health Foundation

This report for The Health Foundation is excellent. I like the way it is based on research and whilst it doesn't cover any specifically new ground, it does provide insight for anyone wishing to improve the safety of patients in hospital. 

"While the knowledge that poor systems can cause harm is not new, this report provides groundbreaking evidence of the extent to which important clinical systems and processes fail, and the potential these failings have to harm patients.

The results of this study, covering seven NHS organisations, identify the variation in the reliability of five key healthcare systems and processes:

• availability of information when making clinical decisions
• prescribing
• handover
• availability of equipment in operating theatres
• availability of equipment for inserting intravenous lines.

The research, led by Professor Bryony Dean-Franklin, was conducted by The Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality (CPSSQ) at Imperial College, and Warwick Clinical Systems Improvement (CSI), University of Warwick."

Fully-funded leadership programme open for application - Health Foundation, UK

 Fully-funded leadership programme open for application

The Health Foundation is seeking people who are passionate about transforming healthcare to join GenerationQ, its fully-funded, masters-level programme creating leaders for improvement.

GenerationQ is open to senior leaders in healthcare or the voluntary sector who are in a position to influence improvements to care quality.

Fellows will learn about the evidence base underpinning leadership for quality improvement and how to apply improvement science, leadership and change theories in practice.

Fellows will also deliver a substantial improvement project in their place of work, benefiting their organisation through addressing real-time quality challenges, based on organisational priorities.

This part-time programme takes between 18 months and two years to complete, and leads to a postgraduate certificate, diploma or Masters in Leadership (Quality Improvement), accredited by Ashridge.

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to continuously improve the quality of healthcare in the UK.

If you are interested in applying, please visit the Health Foundation’s website to find out more and download the application form: www.health.org.uk/generationq Please pass on this information to anyone who may be interested.

The deadline for submitting an application form is 9am on Monday 18 July 2011.

Guide to facial expressions and emotions

I think http://www.cedarseed.com/fire/emotut.jpg should be in every meeting room - if only as a reminder for us all that we say more with our expressions than with what comes out of our mouths...

Get your long documents summarised - Topicmarks

I'm a quick reader but never shy of a short cut I checked out Topicmarks. It promises to summarise the document you load into short easy sentences. I tried it on a complex Dept of Health document and I love the result! The 15 page document of tightly packed text was summarised into a single page of mostly bullet pointed sentences.  I quickly got the gist of what the document was about. And yes, I did then check whether the system produced a good result, by reading the whole thing, and it did.

A great system, though of course, the originator of documents could also provide a short summary list in the first place! I think this will be good for the quick review of academic papers.

It is free (in beta) and I don't get anything for recommending it...

Why do we forget good practice?

I spent a lovely English Spring day visiting the Roman Villa of Chedworth. I came away marvelled by the way in which they had underfloor heating and an hygienic toilet system fifteen hundred (and more) years ago. When the Romans left our small island, those who remained ignored / forgot about (not sure which) these and many other useful inventions.  Why did they do this?

And what other well evidenced business related techniques and products have we forgotten about and are ignoring?

Implementing social media is more than dabbing in a few fun technologies

Technology is really exciting - for those who get excited about it. But technology is useless unless it connects with those who use it. There's the obvious stuff about it needing to be easy to use. But there's also the need to any technology that puts "social" in its marketing blurb - to be just that - social.  And then there's the need for the organisations that want to jump onto the social media bandwagon to make sure they are doing so with thought and concern rather than a random set of activities they can tell everyone they are "into social media".

Here are five sets of questions to ask yourself if you're wanting to involve social media in your business:

1. Why social media and not any other strategy or technique we and our customers are used to?
2. What do we expect to happen? What is our intention? 
3. How will we, and our customers, keep moving with the times as new technologies become available? 
4. To what extend are we building on what works? Does this matter?
5. What policies and legal concerns do we need to take into account?

Oh, and I'll add one more, just in case:

(i) How do we define social media?

Three Collaborative Models for Scaling Up Evidence-Based Practices

A new paper is out is Adm Policy Mental Health (See abstract below). Two of the models are those I've presented on and published about - the rolling cohort and the cascading dissemination model. There are also subsets of these methods - see my book 101 ways to improve your collaborative. 


Three Collaborative Models for Scaling Up Evidence-Based Practices

Chamberlain P, Roberts R, Jones H, Marsenich L, Sosna T, Price JM.

Source

Abstract

The current paper describes three models of research-practice collaboration to scale-up evidence-based practices (EBP): (1) the Rolling Cohort model in England, (2) the Cascading Dissemination model in San Diego County, and (3) the Community Development Team model in 53 California and Ohio counties. Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) and KEEP are the focal evidence-based practices that are designed to improve outcomes for children and families in the child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health systems. The three scale-up models each originated from collaboration between community partners and researchers with the shared goal of wide-spread implementation and sustainability of MTFC/KEEP. The three models were implemented in a variety of contexts; Rolling Cohort was implemented nationally, Cascading Dissemination was implemented within one county, and Community Development Team was targeted at the state level. The current paper presents an overview of the development of each model, the policy frameworks in which they are embedded, system challenges encountered during scale-up, and lessons learned. Common elements of successful scale-up efforts, barriers to success, factors relating to enduring practice relationships, and future research directions are discussed.