Acute Care Collaboration Vanguards announced

A new group, comprising 13 hospital Vanguards, was announced on 25^th September.  These Vanguards are designed to facilitate the spread of excellent hospital services and management across the country by the  formation of chains at district level. The focus is on key trusts developing their reach, forming collaborations and sharing clinical and management knowledge with others. More details can be found here.

There is also a press release from the NHS Confederation supporting the move and a more information in BMJ News (note an NHS Athens Account is required to access BMJ)

A healthy culture for quality patient care

The Kings Fund have updated web pages which look at the six characteristics of a healthy culture in the NHS. Areas including values, teamwork, performance, leadership and learning are covered.

There is also a tool for organisations to assess their culture and to identify the ways in which it is working well and the areas that need to change.

Access the tools here

RCS article: Professional attributes of surgeons

The professional attributes of surgeons

C Marx, R Tomlinson
Extract from the  Bulletin of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, Vol.96, Number 7, p220-223, 2014

An interesting article from The Royal College of Surgeons – hailed by RCS as a landmark publication of individual surgeons outcome data.

Click here to read the full text article

 

Productive Ward article: International Journal of Nursing Studies

The impact of a large-scale Quality Improvement Programme on Work Engagement; Preliminary Results from a national cross-sectional-survey of the ‘Productive Ward …

M White, JSG Wells, T Butterworth – International Journal of Nursing Studies, May 2014

Background
Quality improvement (QI) Programmes, like the Productive Ward: Releasing-time-to-care initiative, aim to ‘engage’ and ‘empower’ ward teams to actively participate, innovate and lead quality improvement at the front line. However, little is known about the relationship and impact that QI work has on the ‘engagement’ of the clinical teams who participate and vice-versa.

Objective
This paper explores and examines the impact of a large-scale QI programme, the Productive Ward, on the ‘work engagement’ of the nurses and ward teams involved.

Design/Methods
Using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), we surveyed, measured and analysed work engagement in a representative test group of hospital-based ward teams who had recently commenced the latest phase of the national ‘Productive Ward’ initiative in Ireland and compared them to a control group of similar size and matched (as far as is possible) on variables such as ward size, employment grade and clinical specialty area.

An interesting article published in Nursing Management UK entitled
Top managers parachuted in to turn around failing trusts

Nursing Management UK, 01 February 2014, vol./is. 20/9(8-9), 13545760
Author(s): Nadeem, Beena

Language: English
Publication Type:  Journal Article
Source: CINAHL

 

Skills for Health: Leadership development for the health sector

Skills for Health would like to announce the launch of two new Leadership Development programmes. The Leadership and Management Programme and the Team Leading Development Programme have been designed specifically for the UK health sector to address ‘real-life’ work challenges. Our leadership programmes can help you develop tomorrows’ leaders from within your organisation, develop a consistently strong leadership culture, and contribute to real performance improvements.

Our open courses allow participants to learn alongside colleagues from different health sector environments, learning from others and sharing common experiences. Alternatively, programmes can be customised for a group of employees, providing opportunities to link programme learning with other organisational development activities.

The Leadership and Management Programme

Offered as a Level 5 Leadership Certificate, this progressive programme focuses on both management and leadership development, aiming to equip operational leaders with the skills and knowledge they require to be effective managers along with an understanding of their own leadership capability. Read More.

The Team Leading Development Programme

This leadership development programme is accredited as a Level 3 Leadership Certificate that focuses on equipping leaders of front line services with the confidence and leadership skills they need to enable staff to deliver good quality services. It provides the skills and knowledge to start their development into team leaders that engage with staff, gain respect, focus on quality and create a high performing culture within their team. Read More.

Our knowledge and experience of the health sector means that our delivery team has first hand experience of supporting and developing the health sector workforce and the programme content is relevant and appropriate.

To find out more, visit www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/leadership,

GMC: Leadership and management for all doctors

General Medical Council (GMC)

Leadership and management for all doctors
This guidance sets out the wider management and leadership responsibilities of all doctors in the workplace, including: responsibilities relating to employment issues; teaching and training; planning, using and managing resources; raising and acting on concerns; and helping to develop and improve services. It comes into effect on 12 March 2012.

• Guidance
• GMC – press release

Mastering Management in Healthcare: Improve your feedback technique

From Radcliffe Publishing

Introduction

In this issue of Mastering Management in Healthcare, it looks at the second of two areas that tend to provoke anxiety in managers old and new – giving feedback to staff and colleagues.

It is worth noting that most of us actually want to know how we are doing, and we look for opportunities to have our work recognised. As long as the process is handled with respect and dignity we don’t even seem to mind being told where we might need to improve. However, recent research shows that of the 77% of NHS staff in England who have access to appraisal, just over a third of those feel it is well structured and leaves them feeling valued(1). Judging by this, there still seems to be a barrier to giving good feedback.

Resource Watch: Commissioning and Quality Improvement

A one stop shop for everything commissioning managers and teams might require can be found at www.QualityMK.nhs.uk

The latest information alerting readers to hot topics like GP consortia development, public health intelligence, outcomes based contracts and all relevant papers will shortly be included on our Health Management page.

FREE 1HOUR online HDAS training for healthcare managers and administrators

Health Business Elite training on Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS)

EBSCO Publishing is offering free online training sessions to NHS England users through the HDAS interface on NHS Evidence. These sessions are open to anyone within NHS England.

Health Business™ Elite contains full-text content for nearly 600 journals such as H&HN: Hospitals & Health Networks, Harvard Business Review, Health Facilities Management, Health Management Technology, Healthcare Financial Management, Marketing Health Services, Materials Management in Health Care, Modern Healthcare, and more.

This database provides comprehensive journal content detailing all aspects of health care administration and other non-clinical aspects of health care institution management. Topics covered include hospital management, hospital administration, marketing, human resources, computer technology, facilities management and insurance.

Session outline

By the end of the session you will have seen how to:

· Identify different search modes e.g. phrase searching, searching with AND, OR, NOT

· Utilise specific field codes to refine a search e.g. title, abstract, geography

· Use truncation to search for words with multiple endings e.g. hospital, hospitals, hospitalisation, hospitalization

· Combine searches to refine your search

· Apply limits to retrieve those pertinent to your search e.g. in a specific age group

· Manage your results including number of articles to display and sorting

· Link to the full text of the articles

This training will last up to 1 hour. There will be opportunity to ask questions throughout and at the end of the session. Your trainer for these sessions will be Richard Crookes [rcrookes@ebsco.com] previously a healthcare librarian in NHS England, now a Training Specialist for EBSCO in the UK and Ireland.

Session Dates and Booking information

You will need a PC with internet access to take part in the session and either a telephone or headphones to listen to the audio. HEADPHONES ARE AVAILABLE IN THE STAFF LIBRARY. The available sessions are listed below. Please click on the date of your choice and you will be directed to a self registration page.

Tuesday 17 January 2012 2.00pm

Wednesday 8 February 2012 10.30am

Thursday 8 March 2012 11.00am

You will be registered automatically. If you haven’t received your confirmation after 2 hours please check your junk / spam email folder.

A timely look at staff appraisal

Extract from the second issue of Mastering Management in Healthcare: a practical resource. 

In this issue:

• Introduction
• Staff Appraisal – chore or golden opportunity?
• Thinking differently about your own development
• About the authors

Introduction

This article is all about developing you and your staff. The advice is kept as  practical as possible and include things that you can apply immediately. The intention is to try and provoke you to think differently about how you manage and encourage you to innovate and experiment.

Staff Appraisal – chore or golden opportunity?

A common challenge facing clinicians entering management roles is how to conduct appraisals for the staff now reporting to them. Quite apart from practical issues such as finding the time and an appropriate environment, the employer may also have a particular format to follow, and the whole process can end up looking like one big distraction from the main objective – providing care.

NHS Employers: Sickness/absence guidance Oct 2011

New managing sickness absence briefing available 15/11/2011

First of a series of communications, this briefing features examples of good practice from across the NHS to help inform the planning of strategies to further reduce sickness absence.

NHS Employers website

 

News from the Kings Fund: Fraud costs/Leadership/Industrial action

2020health

The financial cost of healthcare fraud: what data from around the world shows
This report investigates the true financial cost of fraud to the NHS. It estimates that the NHS loses £3 billion per year in fraud and in light of financial pressures, minimising fraud has the potential to aid with efficiency savings.

• Report
• Press release

also …

CKHS

What makes a top hospital? Leadership
This is the third in a series of publications centred around quality in hospital services. This report looks at the features of leadership that are found in top performing acute organisations.

• Report
• CHKS

also ..

NHS Employers

Guidance on emergency cover during industrial action 
Unison and Unite have both produced guidance on emergency cover and exemptions from industrial action. It encourages their branches to engage with employers when they seek to discuss levels of cover.

• Unison guidance
• Unite guidance
• NHS Employers – news

News from The Kings Fund: 15 November

The Health Foundation

Self management support centre
This self management support area has been developed to support healthcare professionals, service managers and commissioners develop their understanding of self management support. It provides practical approaches and tools for developing a local self management support programme.

• Self management support centre

News from NHS Networks: 14 October

Human bodies: donation for medicine and research This report sets out guidance to help people consider the ethical acceptibility of various ways of encouraging people to donate, both for treatment of others and for scientific research. Read more »

Summary care record to benefit millions, say patient groups A year on from a ministerial review that confirmed the importance of summary care records in supporting urgent and emergency care, patient groups are advocating their use to improve care for millions of people with long term conditions. Read more »

Pain Summit 2011 On Tuesday, 22 November 2011, the Pain Summit 2011 is being held at Central Hall, Westminster. This is a joint initiative by the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition (CPPC), the British Pain Society, the Faculty of Pain Medicine and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Read more »

Guidance on choice of named consultant led team New guidance from the Department of Health sets out how NHS providers will have to accept all clinically appropriate referrals made by clinicians to named hospital consultant led teams. The guidance supports providers and commissioners to implement the choice of named consultant led team for a first consultant led outpatient appointment for elective care where clinically appropriate. Read more »

The public wants more choice of NHS care The public wants more say and greater choice over their NHS healthcare according to a new patient survey carried out by an independent research company on behalf of the Department of Health. Read more »

A more transparent and safer NHS for patients The NHS will become more transparent under proposals set out by health secretary Andrew Lansley. Read more »

Draft information management guidance published The revalidation support team has published three pieces of draft information management guidance to support revalidation. Read more »