Assessing Information And Knowledge Needs, Communication Processes, And Improving Access To Systems Of Information And Knowledge

Task 1

Task 1: Assessing information and knowledge needs

Task 2: Stakeholders, Personal networking and Decision-making process

Task 3: Communication Processes in an Organisation

Task 4: Improving Access to Systems of Information andKnowledge

1. To change the scenario that has been going on some radical decisions are to be taken to take care of the patients interests and to care of them from substandard treatment. The patient has to be kept in the frontline of everything and it can be done by adopting the following ways

• To put emphasis on and commitment to the common values of putting the patient’s life first of everything else throughout the system.
   
• To make the availability of standard healthcare systems and noncompliance to the substandard equipment. To make rigorous policies against the use of substandard equipment.
   
• To put forth strong leadership in professional values such as nursing and also provide steady support to the leadership roles.
   
• The information should be shared with one and all. It should be easily accessible by anyone who needs it or for performance comparison by any individual, service company or institution.
   
• Ensure that research is being undertaken by the organization is patient centered and not for monetary purpose. The outcome of the research should also be of importance to the patient. They should not be doing any personal favor to any patient by picking them for research but every patient should have the right to be involved in a research (Walshe, 2010).

2. The NHS is a very diverse organization and they have to find out the sources and information to decide the steps to be taken to implement the strategies of the institution to avert the situations that occurred (Ham, 2013). They can gather cases and then think about mitigation measures by the help of following sources

• The peer review is one of the important sources from where such cases can be identified. These reviews are made on the basis of concerns and very often they were serious concerns which raises questions of a safe service by the management and hence the information can be gathered from the reviews and acted upon to implement them.
   
• The auditor’s report also do the same work of identifying issues in the management and sending them to the boards for the deficiencies in the organizations risk management techniques. Therefore the reports can be studied and the faults could be figured out and hence mitigation measures can be sorted from the reports.
   
• Annual surveys are a great way of finding out the concerns regarding the staff and the patients who are the people involved in the surveys. Hence on studying the surveys the Trust may find out the exact positions the organization is lagging and also the branches which are not performing well, so that change can be brought about in the places required.
   
• The Royal college of Surgeons who reported the NHS to be lagging in surgical methods and reported their process as dysfunctional can be a good source of critical review and may point out the problems faced by the surgical department and implementations may be carried out accordingly (Ham, 2012).

3. The sources or the information can be gathered and implemented by the following members much better than any other sources. These people or groups are mentioned below

• Executive and the non-executive directors are the people responsible for the success of the NHS including the management of risk and compliance with relevant legislation.
   
• The audit committee can be a good source of maintenance of the risk management system.
   
• The internal auditors work with the audit committee as they have the in depth knowledge of the risks of the management in details.
   
• The chief executive is accountable for the maintenance of a good system of control and that supports the organization objective.
   
• The executive team is responsible for the review of the corporate risks.
   
• All the staff members are responsible for the management of the risks and are the best sources of information regarding the management of the hospital (Ham, 2011).

4. The following recommendations might improve the chances of the procedures of the organization

• There should be a rule of following the common values of the institution, it should be embedded and effectively communicated in the NHS constitution and should be owned and lived by all members of the organization.
   
• The patients must be the first priority of whatever is carried out by the NHS within the available resources, they must receive effective care, the staffs must be compassionate to the patients, the staffs must be committed and work with a common culture and the patients should be protected from any harm and receive utmost care.
   
• The constitution should comply with all codes of conduct and rules and regulation for the staff to comply with and obey them respectively. Everyone’s duty should be to comply with the given standards mentioned in the constitution (Ham, 2011).

1. The most important stakeholders who have high power and interest in the activities of the NHS are

• Commissioners
   
• HCC providers
   
• Staff side
   
• Local full time officers
   
• Special representatives
   
• Links
   
• HC employees
   
• East of England SHA
   
• Public health
   
• GP’s
   
• Board members
   
• Monitor
   
• Local acute trusts

In the next group comes the group B stakeholders who are often difficult to handle. They are generally regional representatives or from the legislative bodies. Most of the time they are inert but can force a huge blow to the organization. Therefore it is necessary to involve them in the objectives of the organization (Ham, 2010).

The stakeholders in group C are very actively involved in the working of the organization, though they have very little influence but their contributions to the organization can be valuable. They are voluntary organization, local communities etc.

The stakeholders in group D are very less involved and therefore only kept informed but not allowed to take any decisions.

2. The group B stakeholders should be involved in because they have strong links at AD level with CSF, they have strong board engagement, links the board and the director in place, puts the joint negotiating committee in place, they have excellent links at director and operation level with local acute trusts (Ham, 2006).

The group B stakeholders are also approachable because they have  good relation with health scrutiny committee, the interim head of communications get positive relationships with local media by showing positive news stories, develop strong local user groups and also develops a positive CQC relation.

Task 2

The group C stakeholders can be kept well informed as they can provide help in the user and patient feedback mechanisms in place, the impatient questionnaires are also kept in place (Dixon, 2005).

The group D stakeholders are not needed to be involved. It is just a priority to maintain good social relation with them.

3. The stakeholders in group A i.e. GP Consortia allows in the new development of relations. The strengthening of JNC relations is made by the help of this group. They would help to rebuild a drowning system by maintaining fresh relations. The development of HCC relations with NHS has to be made as fast as possible (Coombes, 2008).

The group B has to be given the job of developing relations with the CFT membership and governors, the consultation with CFT, development of the relationship with MP’s and to engage as early as possible with Health and Wellbeing board.

The group C has to be asked to work closely with the acute trusts to place the services into the community. Develop strategic partnership with the independent sector to secure business (Beecham, 2000).

The group D can provide national stage to the organization to develop as a community provider.

4. The stakeholder has to be managed in the first place and then with a clear structure in place the plans can be strategized for the stakeholders. It will be managed as follows

• There will be a lead director for stakeholder engagement and this director will be responsible for overseeing engagement strategies and evaluate its effectiveness and report to the board.
   
• For the stakeholders in the group of key players, each stakeholder will have a director who will be the key link with the organization.
   
• The assistant directors are expected to be linked with the PBC group on a monthly basis and form strong relations with the key commissioning groups and develop strategic development strategies (Beecham, 2000).
   
• A bi-monthly stakeholder forum will be developed called stakeholder management committee where the directors and assistant directors will provide reports of advances and progress on key issues with key stakeholders. This will allow a key issue to be taken and then decide on it that when it will be implemented to allow the strategies of the organization to be executed as planned.

Differential strategies are used to deal with different stakeholders and to plan what relation is to be developed with the stakeholder that is whether it should be concluded or extended (Amine Chatti, 2012). The specific strategies for the stakeholders will be as follows

• A targeted stakeholder management
   
• Executive to executive alignment of partners
   
• Operational links managed more actively
   
• Management of the proactive partnership
   
• Stakeholder events to involve partners and patients and improve relationships
   
• Service Development Panels developed to review service proposals.
   
• To increase the attendance at partner boards

1. The current report that is being shown is the report of Gloucestershire Hospitals of NHS foundation trust. All the members of the staff of the hospital has a major role to play in the effective communication and to develop the network of communication internally so that the good news of the foundation is spread all over the media. Communication is not limited to the communication team and is the responsibility of everyone involved in the foundation. Though some tasks are provided by the communications team i.e. leadership technical advice, guidance, and support on all technical issues (Drasgow, 2009). Some of the current responsibilities of the communications team are

• Brand and reputation management
   
• Media relations
   
• Internal communications
   
• Web and intranet development
   
• Campaign management
   
• Graphic design
   
• Project support for key corporate developments and service change
   
• To provide support in case of major accidents or planning

Some of the internal communication techniques of the organization are spread across 7000 employees and more than one hospital sites. The present corporate communication plans of the organization are

• The intranet
   
• Outline magazine
   
• The monthly staff briefing leaflet send globally across e-mails and connected to the director.
   
• Global emails
   
• Screensavers
   
• Poster, leaflets and other printed materials
   
• 100 leaders event

Task 3

The methods of communicating with external media is in the following ways

• By the help of press releases
   
• News events, campaign interviews, photo calls
   
• Our websites
   
• Production of corporate materials- porters, documents and newsletters (Salmon and Young, 2011).

2. The principles to be followed to maintain appropriateness in the communication team and guide them to provide effective communication are as follows

• The strategy of the organization would be to justify everything they do to develop the objectives of the organization.
   
• The communication of the organization should be transparent i.e. honest and clear
   
• The communication is the core business of the organization and everyone has to contribute
   
• All communication is target based and specified for a certain group of stakeholders.
   
• There has to be continuous improvement in the communication to explore the best strategy to be adopted by the organization.
   
• To work hand in hand with other organization to avoid duplication of systems and processes (Yutani, Takahashi and Miyaoka, 2011).

3. The change in policies of the government is occurring every now and then and it is the duty of the NHS to keep developing the management. The reputation of an organization is built through the development of strong and valuable relationship with the key stakeholders, it is not possible by a single team to perform that task. The stakeholders are very important to the organization as they are the ones who develop the reputation by the help of their understanding with the staff as well as the external influences such as the media. The staff of though can be as good as the hospital gets but the external influences are much more difficult to manage. The speed with which external influence is developing it can build or destroy the reputation of an institution in seconds, therefore it is important to tread carefully. The staff morale has to be maintained constantly as the good staff morale influences more recruitment to the institution as well as retainment (Drasgow, 2009). Therefore the following improvements can be brought about in the organization

• To work with the patient experience team to gather information about the status of the reputation of the company, other informal influences such as the focus groups can also provide with such information.
   
• Produce monthly reputation report and pass it down to the executive team.
   
• Promote the value of relate and reputational capital among the staff so that material support can be gathered to make further improvements to the communication line.
   
• To review the internal and external branding to follow the best approach.
   
• To monitor and evaluate the media activity so that the reputation level can be assessed and build the communication channels accordingly.
   
• Develop a brand Centre to facilitate the use of branding to educate and empower others.

4. The best ways of developing one’s personal overall communication skills is by developing

1. Basic listening skills- it is one of the most important skills one has to adopt to so that you can develop good communication skills. It is believed that one can retain only 50% of what they can hear, so if a person is in between a conversation he might have heard only half of what has being said and therefore chances of miscommunication occurs.

The barriers to being a good listener are ways to pay undivided attention, to understand what one is listening to and what one’s response should be.

Resources of developing good listening skills are to be honest and open in the responses one shows to a particular discussion. One should also be respectful and thorough with the speaker. To ask questions to clarify if something was not understandable. One should never interrupt a speaker as it means that one is limiting their own chances of understanding the topic. The use of non-verbal signs is a sign of a good listener. 

Time scale of the development of skill depends on the user that whether he follows all the techniques and overcomes the barrier, if practiced wisely it can be possible in a day (Keir and Wilkinson, 2013).

Task 4

2. Effective written communication- in today’s times of email and text messages people would just send out a short email or text rather than call and talk. It is a very fast and efficient process and also leaves a document trail for work records. Written communication is the best way of communication yet very few people know how to and when to write and therefore this skill has to be developed (Salmon and Young, 2011).

The barriers of a written communication is the complexity of the topic, more complex topics are better be verbally solved rather than written. Lengthy discussions should not be communicated through email. The important thing is to get the meaning of the conversation across.

The resources of written communication is first and foremost to understand the subject of communication, it is also important to know the person one is writing to and the last but the important resource is organizing the writing properly.

Time scale is quite long as it is a skill one has to develop (Yutani, Takahashi and Miyaoka, 2011).

1. Knowledge Management Systems are technologies that support knowledge management in any institution. It involves the generation of knowledge, the processing and coding of the knowledge so that it can be saved from data theft and then the distribution of the knowledge systematically. The aim of this report is to develop a knowledge management system for a college where the intellectual output of the organization can be preserved well using technology and can be explicitly accessed by individuals for the explicit knowledge but the tacit knowledge will be available for everyone for the development of the individuals (Freeze and Kulkarni, 2007). This knowledge can be useful to students as self-motivator, self-knowledge manager, team building, and innovator and solve problems. Knowledge is generated in all institutions, organizations, research Centre’s etc. and stored in form of books, projects, papers, dissertations, thesis etc. in education system many knowledge are developed locally and known as grey literature remains in the shadow of other books. The work of the knowledge management would be to make these literatures available for discussion. Knowledge management can transform organizational new levels of effectiveness, efficiency and scope of operation, by the use of advanced technology (Corrigendum, 2014).

2. Knowledge management helps the educational institutions to improve their capacity of gathering and sharing information and knowledge and the application of these knowledge to solve problems and support the research to continue the work. The knowledge management satisfies the needs of the employees in management level as well as the students in order to increase the quality of management as well as the enhancement of quality of lectures to the students (Bhatt, 2002). The following changes can be implemented in the current knowledge management of the institution (Hall, 2006)

• To mobilize the hidden implicit or tacit knowledge.
   
• To integrate knowledge from the institution and make it accessible to all.
   
• Identification of the missing knowledge
   
• The creation of new knowledge system
   
• Make the knowledge database more accessible
   
• Create a culture where knowledge is shared among all and experimentation techniques are applied to it.
   
• Codify and protect the new knowledge (Van Beveren, 2002).

3. The following implementations should be brought about in the educational system in general

• Ensure the governance, academic and examination reforms to be brought about and to establish linkages between school education, higher education and the job market.
   
• Expand the institutional base to accommodate more students and increase the capacity by the help of up gradation of knowledge management system to accommodate the extra occupants.
   
• Create an appropriate sharing model of the knowledge management system so that it can be shared not only among the students of the respective establishments but also among other institutions.
   
• Integrate the skill development processes of the institution by availing information from the knowledge management system to understand the current trends in corporate sectors.
   
• It will also promote a healthy competition among the institutions to keep contributing to the knowledge management systems to gain recognition (Amine Chatti, 2012).

References

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Beecham, L. (2000). NHS cancels record number of operations in England. BMJ, 320(7235), pp.599-599.

Beecham, L. (2000). Tony Blair launches radical NHS plan for England. BMJ, 321(7257), pp.317-317.

Bhatt, G. (2002). Management strategies for individual knowledge and organizational knowledge. Journal of Knowledge Management, 6(1), pp.31-39.

Coombes, R. (2008). One in four NHS trusts in England fail hygiene standards. BMJ, 336(7658), pp.1393-1393.

Corrigendum. (2014). Journal of Knowledge Management, 18(1).

Dixon, J. (2005). Reforming the NHS in England. BMJ, 331(7520), pp.852-852.

Drasgow, E. (2009). Teaching package increases conversational skills, play skills, emotional skills, and friendship skills of three young children with autism. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 3(3), pp.165-167.

Freeze, R. and Kulkarni, U. (2007). Knowledge management capability: defining knowledge assets. Journal of Knowledge Management, 11(6), pp.94-109.

Hall, M. (2006). Knowledge management and the limits of knowledge codification. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(3), pp.117-126.

Ham, C. (2006). Reforms to NHS commissioning in England. BMJ, 333(7561), pp.211-212.

Ham, C. (2010). The coalition government’s plans for the NHS in England. BMJ, 341(jul14 2), pp.c3790-c3790.

Ham, C. (2011). Competition in the NHS in England. BMJ, 342(feb14 2), pp.d1035-d1035.

Ham, C. (2011). The NHS in England in 2012. BMJ, 343(dec21 1), pp.d8259-d8259.

Ham, C. (2012). The NHS in England in 2013. BMJ, 346(jan02 1), pp.e8634-e8634.

Ham, C. (2013). Regulating the NHS market in England. BMJ, 346(mar11 3), pp.f1608-f1608.

Keir, A. and Wilkinson, D. (2013). Communication skills training in pediatrics. J Pediatric Child Health, 49(8), pp.624-628.

Salmon, P. and Young, B. (2011). Creativity in clinical communication: from communication skills to skilled communication. Medical Education, 45(3), pp.217-226.

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Yutani, M., Takahashi, M. and Miyaoka, H. (2011). Changes in communication skills of clinical residents through psychiatric training. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 65(6), pp.561-566.