Top 10 tips: North Birmingham

Focused Clinical Engagement:a sared vision between primary and secondary care is critical to success, and is ten times harder to recover if it is not there at the outset of the project.

Organisational Ownership: be clear that the business case is owned by the key stakeholder organisations – in this case, Primary Care Trust and acute hospital.

Have More than One Clinical Lead for Secondary Care: it is not healthy for one consultant to carry the entire workload of a project. This needs to be owned and shared from the outset.

Assess Skill Levels at the Beginning of a Project, don’t make assumptions: if a project involves training to acquire new skills it is important to accurately assess exactly what is needed at the outset. Build some time in to the project plan to do this or the expectations and desired outcomes will not be clear.

Factor in Sufficient time or back-fill to release lead clinicians to support the development of the project: the human dimension of change is easy to under-estimate and good working relationships take time to foster.

Have Realistic Expectations!

Involve the hospital admin and clerical staff from the outset in the project planning phase (even if they don’t want to be involved!).

Slippage is not failure, it is an opportunity to refocus!

Project learning and outcomes are the property of the project: don’t get caught up in Ethics Committee red tape. This is not strictly research, it is more about service transformation.

Employ a patient and tenacious Project Manager!

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