Activities

/Activities
Activities 2018-02-21T11:02:52+00:00

Public-Private Partnerships and more …

Typically, DIRMI activities comprise public-private partnerships. Here, scientists, implementation experts and field actors combine (a) research, (b) practise and (c) education into a win-win setting exploring emerging fields of human factors in healthcare transformation.

Research

There are several reasons why we should do more research on human factors in healthcare transformation. First, scientific evidence is fundamental for change and transformation, in particular in healthcare. Our goal is ‘evidence based transformation’.

Second, change practises should be tested thoroughly and not simply ‘copy-paste’ from other industries. We think this will work better – in particular for people involved. Finally, although considered as essential, human factors in healthcare are still highly understudied.

With research we aim for an unprecedented ‘opening up’ of medicine and related healthcare domains, in order to benefit sustainable change and improvement.

.

Rules of engagement

We want to know what works (and what not), also learning from other industries. However, we acknowledge that rules-of-engagement in healthcare can be quite different from other domains. That’s why more scientific human factor related knowledge can help to determine how things can be changed best. Until recently, research methodologies used in medicine versus those used in organizational or social sciences, often differed in many aspects. In DIRMI projects we synergize these formerly quite distant fields towards usable insights and concrete practises.

DIRMI research varies from systematic literature reviews to multi-site action research projects. And any conceivable combination in between. Current DIRMI research:

Learning & development

New areas

Managers, administrator and policy makers are increasingly being challenged with the task of implementing system-level change, like value based healthcare, triple aim, integrated care and far-stretching technology. Without exception, such programs have lasting influences on daily routines of many people involved. And for most managers, handling these impacts necessitates adequate, practical and hands-on human factor related knowledge at various levels simultaneously.

DIRMI learning & development activities are characterised by:

.

System In The Class: Representatives of stakeholders learn collectively, based on their specific roles across the same (healthcare) region or municipality

Action (research) Learning: Real-life programs are fundamental to our learning courses, as is continuously enlarging insights by scientific approaches

Blended Learning: Combining class-room, online, team-based, individual learning and coaching

Facing the ‘dirmi’-Paradigm

Having deep insight in oneself is a prerequisite to help re-invent the status-quo and help professions and professionals to redesign themselves. Dirmi: Who am I?

Medical ‘leadership’

Historically, healthcare is organized ‘around’ the work and role of physicians. Despite the various changes and even rapid innovations across the healthcare arena, the much contested position of the medical profession is often discussed when it comes to determinants of sustainable innovation. Institutional agency to adapt to the current shifts between professional boundaries, have resulted in the trend of ‘medical leadership’ in several countries. Not surprisingly, the two topic within these new competencies of physicians, entail ‘collaborative skills’ and ‘personal development’.

Against all odds?

A new generation of professionals, innovative content in training curricula, the modern patient and more external societal trends strongly influence healthcare professional’s make up in terms of attitude and behaviour. Unequivocally, research, field experiences and society urge us to start rethinking the modern healthcare professional. Working in an ever-changing patient-centred setting, she/he must be skilled in continuously adapting to the challenges of effectively working with a high paced stream of all kinds of people, while adequately using information and intelligent systems.

In this perspective we enter relatively new terrain of professionalism mainly based on taking initiative, speaking up and listening simultaneously, organizational sensitivity, and other social skills, while the majority of the contemporary professionals has been educated the ‘old’ way.

New Professionalism

Ancient professional culture and various unwritten rules often still dominate healthcare practise. Moreover, in general proven, evidence based healthcare innovations takes up to 15 years to be sustainably implemented. Hence, a power-contest between doing things the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ way. To overcome this impasse, change should also come from within professions itself. Maybe, physicians have taken the lead, lately, with their attempts to ‘rewrite’ their historical dominant, autocratic position, into ‘medical leadership’ (although the literature suggests that ‘nursing leadership’ appeared several years earlier).

At DIRMI we investigate novel ways to influence and facilitate modern professional agency, possible one of the most important institutional building blocks to sustainable healthcare transformation.

Implementation and valorisation

DIRMI Projects connect science and society by facilitating development and implementation of top-notch products and services that enable healthcare transformation. Public-private partnerships within the DIRMI network synthesize the added values of field-experience and scientific insights, and often result in lasting collaborations in market roll-out of proven practises.

.

Current examples are:

  • European introduction and enhancement of the TeamSTEPPS™ curriculum in elderly care
  • Extension of the Model for Assessment of Telemedicine (MAST)
  • HIM SL.