Communities of Practice in NHS Scotland Annette Thain

Outline CoPs in Scotland Findings from recent research What does this mean for you? Practical support

+ 8 Special Health Boards

Accountable Officers Network Scotland “The controlled Drugs Accountable Officer’s Network Scotland has found the community a really useful way to have a single repository for storing approved documents whilst being able to signpost practitioners to a single source of information” Audrey Thompson Learning Disability Speech & Language “The Community builder toolkit enabled the community to create the website we envisaged which allowed us to manage, store and share documents whilst also creating discussions on specific special interest topics” James Reid Borders Research Forum “The community is for everyone its main purpose is to offer support, start a discussion, or a blog about a particular research topic and to highlight the work currently ongoing within NHS Borders” Joy Borowska NHS24 Knowledge Lab “NHS 24 made full use of the support and technology available from Knowledge Services to support our need to develop and design our CoP. Knowledge Services support and level of expertise proved invaluable, we could not have done it without them” Clare Scalon AAC: A Right to Speak “To date the community has been particularly useful to members in building peer relationships with existing partnerships, and has enhanced best practice, idea sharing and subject related discussions” Joanne Boyle Highland Link Practitioners “The Community website as an essential tool to deliver the programme as it enables the core team and specialists to share resources across a diverse geographic area. Recognise the value and importance of workbased learning supported by a range of specialists that individuals in remote areas would not normally have easy access.” Dementia Managed Knowledge Network (MKN) The dementia MKN offers up-to-date information, new resources and opportunities for discussion. Av monthly stats =450 Number of CoPs =18 Number of members = 492 (excluding many of the CoPs) Dementia Supporting Change The website provides access to the resources for the programme masterclasses plus additional useful resources to support projects. The Discussion area supports regional learning sets.

CoP support a range of topics including Quality improvement initiatives National quality improvement collaboratives Education programmes CPD Topic specific Clinical Managed Clinical Networks Professional groups

Evidence and local context People and experience Grey literature eg local reports, stats Literature searches eg Medline Librarians to help Searching and synthesis Actionable knowledge Social use of knowledge Knowledge into action Social interaction and social learning Knowledge in actionable formats

Over to Igor to hear about his research

The Core Group An online community has four “Core” roles that need to be addressed. Community of Practice Coordinator Website Administrator Information Resources Member Support Link with activities at face to face meetings Look for opportunities to promote Summarise discussions Organise content Keep it up to date Devolve responsibilities to sub pages Moderate members on receipt of an welcome message with instructions Encourage and invite new members Promote use of profiles Monitor key websites Add new links, news etc Publish lessons learned

All this needs support from a FACILITATOR

Section 5 – Measuring Impact K2A Evaluation Framework Results Chain For more info and the templates to use the framework contact: Practice is safer, more efficient and more effective Medium-term Outcomes An illustration using the example of the effect of a Community of Practice

Staffing.5wte AfC band 5 - technical support and training for new website administrators for 3 months, set up new community websites with generic content.5wte AfC Band 4 admin support to manage communication and general support eg the 6 monthly reviews AfC Band 6 or 7 facilitate workshops as required Technical support from IT for bugs fixes

Technology Widgets based technology based on Umbraco content management system developed to support front end content entry 18 different types of widgets to support range of functionality 2 colour schemes Search - option to toggle to search The Knowledge Network from CoPs

Thank you for listening! Annette Thain