Knowledge Mobilisation and Quality Improvement

In this second of three blog posts we will explore knowledge mobilisation and quality improvement. This was one of the themes of the Sharing Good Knowledge Mobilisation Practice sessions held during #KNOWvember22.

Continuous Improvement Project Tracker 

Tilly Dixon shared the work she has been doing with the quality improvement team at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, raising awareness of quality improvement.  The aim was to develop a process to record and share all the improvement work taking place so people could easily see what had been done previously and what was currently underway.  The Improvement Director had a good idea of what was required and shared her ideas with the library team.  Tilly mapped this specification into a process that clarified what inputs and outputs were required at each stage.  Tilly then looked for a no-cost solution to develop a system to do this.  A decision was taken to use Microsoft Office 365 to develop this.  Microsoft forms were used to log the projects, SharePoint was used to hold all the details underpinned by a SharePoint Directory to hold all the associated documents.  Tilly created a power automate flow that took the project submission form information and automatically created an entry on SharePoint.   Following testing with the quality improvement team, more formal stakeholder testing took place before the system went live.   

Some of the learning from developing the Continuous Improvement Project Tracker includes: 

• Good collaboration between the teams involved led to an iterative approach to designing a workable solution  

• Understanding more about the potential of Office 365 has led to the work being adopted and adapted by other teams to create repositories and the SharePoint Web front-end is popular. 

• This single approach is easy to adapt and apply to other repository-style projects, for example  Clinical Audit and Research have adapted the process and it is being used a as proof of concept to manage locally produced clinical guidelines and to hold evidence search results 

• Freely available Microsoft training is helpful for becoming skilled at using Office 365 tools  

Embedding Knowledge Management into in-house quality improvement training 

Jess Pawley from Somerset NHS Foundation Trust shared her learning, including what did not work so well, when embedding knowledge management into an in-house quality improvement training programme.  As an embedded knowledge specialist working within the trust quality improvement team for a number of years Jess was keen to introduce knowledge management concepts.  However, the initial approach took lots of re-working before it finally got embedded into the in-house quality improvement training. Lots of learning was gained from not being able to get this to work initially and this learning is now being applied to rolling-out knowledge management concepts to the wider trust. 

Key learning from Jess was: 

• Be clear about what you are setting out to achieve or the problem you are hoping to solve by using a knowledge mobilisation technique. 

• Be prepared to discuss and find the right language for the team you are working with to describe knowledge mobilisation.  For the quality improvement team, the term knowledge management had more meaning. 

• Mapping where mobilising evidence and knowledge can fit alongside an existing process can help people to see how it can be used in practice. 

• Using knowledge mobilisation tools, such as the Before Action Review, is a useful way to prepare for the introduction of other knowledge mobilisation activities 

• Working in collaboration with others and adapting knowledge mobilisation tools to suit the circumstances of the team is a great way to succeed  

You can view all of the slides shared in the session.