The STEM Club in the North East of England
About the Sustainability and Transformation Evidence Mobilisation Club
Working in partnership to support the work of the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership
The publication of the NHS Five Year Forward View and the subsequent arrival of Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) signalled an attempt to change relationships between NHS providers and commissioners, moving away from a competitive marketplace towards closer partnership working.
In the North East of England, a group of staff from NHS Library and Knowledge Services, Commissioning and Public Health are looking to do the same. The Sustainability and Transformation Evidence Mobilisation Club (or STEM Club) is an informal group of colleagues working to support the mobilisation of evidence within the healthcare system.
We are trying to achieve this aim in two ways:
* By making links to work streams within the North East and Cumbria Partnership (and potentially beyond)
* By providing both virtual and real (in person) opportunities to connect as a group and understand who is working on what, making effective use of our collective knowledge and insights
A small group of STEM members has been meeting for over a year now and we have started to make links between work stream leads and library and knowledge staff. So far, a number of LKS staff have been involved in working on number of topics including:
* Frailty
* Maternal choice in perinatal care
* Physical exercise in preventive healthcare
We held our first full meeting of the STEM Club in March 2018. We used the name Club as the group has no formal governance arrangements as such. The event was attended by staff from LKS, Public Health, Commissioning and HE. A number of members of the group are from Yorkshire and Humber and we are happy to welcome colleagues from outside the North East. We were genuinely surprised at the level of enthusiasm in the room. There was a huge amount of interest in the work that has been done so far and a shared commitment to continuing with this approach. A few key challenges and affirmations came from the day:
* STEM is a “bottom-up” movement. This is genuine partnership working between colleagues with a shared interest in evidence mobilisation.
* We need to be responsive to the pace of work at a system level and be able to “share as we go”.
* We also need to be open to accessing and using a range of different types of evidence and knowledge (including tacit knowledge).
We are thinking about how we can share more widely regionally and nationally and we would be very interested to hear from others who have been working with their STPs locally.
The librarians who have been involved in the work are happy to share their experiences with you: Kirstin Himsworth County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust Claire Masterman County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust Dor Wilson Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust
You may also want to contact your Regional LKS Lead to find out more about working with STPs:
David Stewart (North)
Ruth Carlyle (Midlands and the East)
Helen Bingham (South)
Louise Goswami (London & KSS)
Joanne Naughton
NHS Library and Knowledge Services Development Manager – North East