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An Action Learning Set (ALS) is a group of people within a workplace that meet with the specific intention of solving workplace problems. 

The main aim of an ALS is to come away with a set of realistic actions that will help to solve or understand the issues at hand.

Working well together – Action Learning Skills guide by Caroline Doherty (used with permission).

“The dialogue which occurs between set members within an action learning set is different from a usual social or even a work based conversation. As such it is helpful to be explicit about the values and rules which will ensure that all set members can participate fully.”

More information

This postcard describes the Action Learning Set tool in words and pictures.

View the NHS Knowledge Mobilisation Framework e-learning module to see an action learning set taking place.

An alerting services helps you to keep up-to-date in your desired area of interest by providing you with information regularly.

Alerts can be set-up for individual journal titles (tables of contents), news from appropriate organisations andwebsites or they can be created within databases (such As CINAHL, Medline and Embase) by creating a search and then setting up and alert to email you when new articles are published.

How to set-up alerts from NHS databases

For further information on current awareness, see the following report for the Service Transformation Task and finish group Current Awareness Services – Final Report and Recommendations.

Horizon scanning is a process to help you identify potential trends, opportunities, new technologies or threats that could impact on your area of interest.

Identifying these helps teams to plan for the future by taking advantage of such developments or being better prepared for them when they occur.

In health, this could be identifying new and emerging medications, technologies or interventions that could be beneficial to your service or change practice and policy. It could be workplace planning or new drug developments.

There are many horizon scanning services available which are listed below.

• National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Horizon Scanning
• NHS Employers Horizon scanning

Investigative searching are methods used to search for and identify, based on specified criteria, records/data/documents and so forth which have been stored on a database or on the internet.

Definition from the Knowledge Management specialist library.

References

• Westbrook, JL, Coiera EW and Gosling AS (2005) Do online information retrieval systems help experienced clinicians answer clinical questions, Volume 12 Issue 3, pages 315 to 321

Policy briefings are brief concise summaries on a particular issue.

They refrain from using jargon and are often intended for the non-specialist.

They can take 2 forms.

1. An advocacy brief gives advice and argues in favour of a particular course of action
2. An objective brief gives balanced information for the intended audience

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