Organisational interventions to reduce length of stay in hospital: a rapid evidence assessment – Health Services and Delivery Research

This study sought to

  1. describe the nature of interventions that have been used to reduce length of stay in acute care hospitals;
  2. identify the factors that are known to influence length of stay; and
  3. assess the impact of interventions on patient outcomes, service outcomes and costs.

Finds the design and implementation of an intervention seeking to reduce (directly or indirectly) the length of stay in hospital should be informed by local context and needs. This involves understanding how the intervention is seeking to change processes and behaviours that are anticipated, based on the available evidence, to achieve desired outcomes (‘theory of change’). It will also involve assessing the organisational structures and processes that will need to be put in place to ensure that staff who are expected to deliver the intervention are appropriately prepared and supported.

http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/131349/FullReport-hsdr02520.pdf

Selecting For Excellence – Final Report – Medical Schools Council

The Selecting for Excellence project was established to address the fact that half of UK secondary schools and colleges did not provide a single applicant to medicine in recent years. This report highlights the need for an expansion of outreach activity to ensure that there is coverage across the whole of the UK. It makes a series of recommendations as to how medical schools, organisations such as Health Education England, and Government, can work together to address them. The report also calls on the NHS to expand the provision of work experience for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

http://www.medschools.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Selecting-for-Excellence-Final-Report.pdf

 

Leadership Vacancies In The NHS: What Can Be Done About Them? – The King’s Fund

There is a growing awareness that NHS provider organisations are experiencing a high number of vacancies at senior levels, are reliant on interims and are experiencing a greater ‘churn’ of senior leaders. This situation could have a negative impact on staff morale and engagement, on costs and on performance. The King’s Fund, in collaboration with the HSJ Future of NHS Leadership Inquiry, undertook a freedom of information request to obtain an accurate picture of board-level vacancies, supplementing the data gathered with in-depth interviews and a literature review. This report details the level of vacancies and their impact and suggests reasons for this.

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_file/leadership-vacancies-in-the-nhs-kingsfund-dec14.pdf

 

Safer Clinical Systems: Evaluation Findings – The Health Foundation

Safer Clinical Systems is an approach for improving safe and reliable health care. It is based on principles adapted from high-reliability organisations, established risk management techniques from hazardous industries, and quality improvement methods. The Safer Clinical Systems approach was tested and developed over two phases. This report looks at the theory, summarises the evaluation of the approach and makes various recommendations regarding refinement and development of the approach. It also summarises two case studies where the approach has been used.

http://www.health.org.uk/public/cms/75/76/313/5103/Safer%20Clinical%20Systems_evaluation%20findings.pdf?realName=rL32tX.pdf

 

Two Words That Kill Innovation – Harvard Business Review

Prove It. Over the past 50 years, management practices have become ever more scientific and quantitative. Managing by the numbers, using business analytics and leveraging Big Data are all considered to be unalloyed goods, indicative of enlightened management. Without question, data and analytics have their roles and their benefits. But they have a really important dark side too, and when managers don’t see that dark side, they accidentally kill innovation.

https://hbr.org/2014/12/two-words-that-kill-innovation/

 

The PRACTICE Model of Coaching: Finding the Best Solution to a Problem – Mind Tools

If someone asked you for the best way to drive from point A to point B, you wouldn’t advise him just to get in his car and start driving. He’d probably end up lost!

The same is true when you’re coaching team members. You need to work with them to find the best route from problem to solution, dividing what they need to do along the way into easy, manageable steps. The PRACTICE model of coaching helps you do this.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/practice-model-of-coaching.htm

Managing 3 Types of Bad Bosses – Harvard Business Review

On a chilly Paris morning some years ago, I was talking to a group of young managers about building high-performance teams. As our conversation progressed, I asked them why they hadn’t already executed some of the ideas we had been talking about. I was completely taken aback by the response: Most blamed their bosses for their inertia. They felt that they had the worst kind of supervisors, and there was no way to get past them. That night, I thought long and hard about the discussion, and had to agree that bad bosses can deflate the best intentions, disable the most enthusiastic people, and freeze the hottest ideas. But I wondered how widespread the problem was. To find out, I reached out to my network using social media. The response was overwhelming, suggesting that the problem was widespread and worthy of analysis.

https://hbr.org/2014/12/managing-3-types-of-bad-bosses/