Tag Archive: Medicology


Importance of an effective team

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Kirsty — Leave a comment
February 19, 2010

In businesses where there are groups of people working it is important that they’re able to work together. If they are not able to work together, it results in conflict and low productivity. In some cases it can result in major mistakes being made.

Ideally all members of the group should share the same ideas and goals. However in reality often the goals are shared within the team but the ideas about how to achieve that sometimes differ. This can be a good thing as long as there is good clear communication and the ability to compromise in order to get things done.

The team dynamic usually consists of degree of hierarchy, where each person is assigned a role. In a medical setting you can see this within individual departments which are smaller teams within a larger team, that is the hospital, which is a smaller team with a particular trust and so on until you get to the largest team of all the NHS.

Now we’ve all seen the stories on the news about the NHS failing, this is because their are parts of this team that are not working effectively. If you think about it logically each department is essentially a business if it does not work effectively then it loses customers this can then impact on the hospital as a whole because if you have a bad experience in one department then you are not likely to go back or at the very least reluctant to go to the hospital where you had the bad experience fearing that if you do the same thing may happen again.

There are a number of options that can be applied to rectify the situation:

  • Change the Team
  • Alter the hierarchy
  • Take Courses in team management and effectiveness

If you decided to take the 3rd option then your next question is who/where can i find these courses. Well there is a company called Medicology Ltd. This company offers a diverse range of tools to help you make your team the best it can be.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comment

Clinical Business Excellence

Filed Under: Healthcare Products, The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
February 19, 2010

The definition of business excellence is: a state of organizational performance achieved through the successful integration of a variety of operational and strategic elements that enables an organization to become one of the best in its field. Excellence is initially evident when an organization rises above its competitors, and it is usually measured by the ability to sustain a leading or significant market share. The strategic and operational elements contributing to excellence include the organization’s approach to total quality management, quality assurance, quality awards and quality standards, core competency, benchmarking, customer service, the balanced scorecard, and leadership. Taken altogether, these components should produce an organizational approach to the generation, development, and delivery of products and services that is better, cheaper, and smarter than that of the competition. Attempts at becoming an excellent organization have spawned terms such as best practice, best-in-class, and world class manufacturing and are usually associated with a holistic approach to competitive advantage.

So clinical business excellence takes this definition and applies it to clinical settings. Medicology has a centre of excellence in this area. They are already running courses to help the NHS staff develop on both a professional and a personal level. Now they are holding a conference on, yes you guessed it, Clinical Business Excellence. This conference will be held on the 29th June 2010 at Park Crescent Conference Centre. For more details see clinicalbusiness.co.uk.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Comment

Consultant Interview Skills

Filed Under: Leaderhsip & Management, Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
January 30, 2010

Most people would not even consider taking an exam without acquiring the relevant knowledge, skills and insight in preparation for it and therefore why would you approach perhaps one of the most important events in your life, getting the right consultant job, with any greater uncertainty than there needs to be? You wouldn’t. In fact, we know that you’d want to absolutely ensure you stood the best possible chance of success and that is why we have developed the Medicology approach to consultant interview success. It’s your future and so we don’t believe you should take any more chances than necessary.

The Medicology approach consists of the following:

  • Gold standard, low number, specialty-specific consultant interview course
  • Access to consultantinterviews.co.uk, allowing you to see example questions, hot topics, key strategies, CV guidance and more
  • Psychological profiling to understand your likely strengths and weaknesses, as well as their match to your specialty
  • Back up coaching – fail to get appointed on 4 occasions and we’ll examine the reasons why, as well as coach you to success

CONSULTANT INTERVIEW SKILLS OPEN PROGRAMME

      Pre-Interview visits – creating personal presence & deriving benefit
      Understanding your consultant interview panel
      Building rapport with interviewers
      Effective communication skills within interviews
      Advanced interview techniques
      Psychological techniques for increased rapport, impact & clarity
      Understanding the reasoning behind the question
      Answering questions within the context of who’s asking – understanding the interviewer
      Recognising the effects of your internal wiring on your approach to answering questions
      Effectively structuring your answers
      Talking about yourself & showing the real you – do & don’t guidance
      The answers you must have – knowing what to research
      Handling difficult or unexpected questions
      Dealing with ethical questions
      Dealing with political questions
      Developing business or commercial healthcare knowledge
      Effective presentation skills
      Demonstrating initiative, personality, leadership and political awareness
      Understanding your body language
      Question practice with a 1:6 instructor-participant ratio

Benefits and objectives

  • Get the best jobs by adopting the right strategies for your specific specialty
  • Develop appropriate confidence in all interview situations
  • Communicate in the right language and with the appropriate degree of confidence for your specialty
  • Utilise the full range of interview strategies to influence the result
  • Increase awareness of the necessary key topics
  • Gain valuable practice and personal feedback

Course type and teaching methods

The course consists of an engaging mixture of delivery styles including lectures, discussions and exercises all designed to ensure you the highest possible success in your future consultant interview. A substantial component of the afternoon is dedicated to interview practice in groups of 6 people with each person having individual mock interview questions in front of the small group. This structure is extremely successful in recreating the pressures of a real interview whilst giving each person the opportunity to rehearse in a safe environment whilst receiving valuable feed back from a trained facilitator and the small group of fellow attendees. All candidates learn from listening to others answers, reflection and tutor feedback. Topics covered include the political agenda, clinical governance, ethical decisions, clinical leadership, dealing with difficult colleagues, conflict, supporting junior doctors and teaching. These sessions are facilitated by senior Medicology coaches and by experienced, trained consultants with direct experience of interviewing for consultant colleagues.

Tags: , ,
Comment

Morale Testing Instrument (MTI)

Filed Under: HR & Personel, Leaderhsip & Management, The NHS and Healthcare, Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
January 9, 2010

Morale is one of the most significant factors affecting organisational performance with clear links to many adverse situations:

  • High sickness & absence
  • High staff turnover
  • Poor performance
  • Poor clinical outcome
  • Low customer satisfaction ratings
  • Reduced team effectiveness
  • Conflict & obstruction
  • Increased tribunals & grievances

Medicology MTI has been developed to address two specific needs:

      a robust and sensitive measure of morale
      a differential diagnosis of the factors positively or negatively influencing it

It consists of a series of questions around known influencing factors and takes the average person around 10 minutes to complete.

Robust Measure

Medicology MTI introduces two important processes to ensure that the morale measurement returned is both sensitive and representative.

Firstly, it utilises variance to assess morale, i.e. how far above of below neutral the score for a particular factor is for that person and thus avoids the weakness found in many systems that use an arbitrary scale.

Secondly, it asks the respondent to indicate how important a factor is and this is taken into account in the overall calculation. Coupled with variance, this creates an immensely sensitive measure.

Differential Diagnosis

Medicology MTI is designed to provide detailed analysis, reporting and guidance. Your morale report will include analysis by:

  • overall score
  • individual questions
  • different staffing groups or departments

Furthermore, individual questions contribute to section morale scores, to help you identify problems in the following areas:

  • Growth & Development
  • Leadership & Management
  • Personal Factors
  • Relationships
  • Work (the work itself)
  • Workplace (the work environment)

This level of analysis and reporting allows you to not only assess morale in different staff groups but to diagnose any specific problem areas so that interventions may be applied.

Practical Information

Medicology MTI is designed to make your life easy:

  • Run morale testing from a few to thousands swiftly and effortlessly
  • Define which staff groups are most appropriate to you
  • Re-run the survey at intervals (which can be set up automatically e.g. 3 monthly intervals) to assess how it is changing over time
  • Bulk upload your staff from Microsoft Excel® or provide them to us and we’ll do it

For more information or to try out this great product for yourself see medicology mti

Tags: , ,
Comment

Medical Perception – Aiding Research within Healthcare

Filed Under: HR & Personel, Leaderhsip & Management, The NHS and Healthcare, Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
January 2, 2010

medicalperception.com from Medicology Ltd allows Trusts, PCTs, SHAs, Government, Pharmaceutical, Medical Equipment & Biotech companies, health service suppliers and more to access, survey and evaluate the mindset of health service staff, simply and cost-effectively. Medicology Ltd is also the leading provider of leadership, management and personal development for health service professionals, especially clinicians, meaning we spend most of our lives inside the heads of clinical staff, understanding how they think, how they evaluate problems, their similarities and differences from each other, their sources of meaning and more. That’s a very, very good place to be when designing meaningful, high quality research.

What can we do?

  • Survey health professionals in every medical specialty
  • Access the medical mind nationally and internationally
  • Evaluate clinical perceptions around drug therapies
  • Gauge perceptions and feelings about important issues
  • Develop insight into clinical pathways
  • Understand how professionals choose products & services
  • Develop greater sales force effectiveness
  • Evaluate job satisfaction & morale
  • Run a series of evaluations over time

This is just a brief set of suggestions, so if you need something not on the list then simply ask.

Why medicalperception.com?

There are very compelling reasons to use medicalperception.com

  • Highly cost-effective for the highest quality research
  • Rapid deployment time
  • Professional outward appearance
  • Ability to retain and re-run research studies, gaining insight into trends over time
  • Build in the ability to control for different psychologies
  • Highly trusted, competent team
  • Enormous degree of medical insight available in study design
Tags: ,
Comment

Driving Cost Improvement from the Clinical Coalface

Filed Under: The NHS and Healthcare, Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
December 15, 2009

Given the current economic climate this is an important and timely conference, designed specifically to help address the challenge facing healthcare teams and organisations as they strive to manage costs in a period of growing financial famine. Whilst commencing with the drivers of financial change, the programme addresses the full breadth of issues surrounding achieving meaningful cost improvement without compromising clinical quality. Cost improvement will only be achieved with the hearts, minds and practical engagement of the clinical workforce itself and so this receives special attention in a practical, hard hitting but positive programme.

Medicology Conferences are designed to enable the widest possible audience to gain insight into and solutions
to the core issues facing healthcare professionals today, by providing a cost-effective and accessible platform for information migration, experience sharing, collaboration and knowledge management. Conference topics are identified utilising the following criteria:

• There is a pressing need to resolve challenges in that area
• A wider audience needs access to important insight
• The topic area warrants wider discussion
• The issue in question has significant impact on healthcare success

We are particularly committed to bringing knowledge, insight, strategies & skills to frontline healthcare
professionals, who often face the challenge of implementing major initiatives or resolving key challenges at the operational coalface. Doctors, Nurses, Allied and Business Professionals at all levels of the organisation need access to the insight brought to Medicology Conferences. Widely Accessible to the Right People
Clinical and other frontline staff often find it difficult to access the insight necessary to succeed and thrive in the modern environment because many healthcare conferences are organised, publicised and priced in a manner that precludes them from attending when in fact it is they who really need access to the insight. Medicology conferences are designed to address this very issue by:
• Carefully managing costs to ensure the lowest possible cost of attendance
• Utilising lower cost but high quality venues to ensure the right capacity at the right price
• Ensuring the widest possible publicity to the right people

To book onto this amazing conference Cost Improvement Conference

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

Clinical Directors 101

Filed Under: Leaderhsip & Management, The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 16, 2009
Core Skills for the Clinical Service Lead

For those of you who don’t know the term clinical director can be divided into the categories lab director, medical director, chief of service, etc. Essentially it just means that they are Top Dog of a department in terms of the medical side of things. For those of you who are familiar with the TV Show “House” the title character Gregory House is a clinical director as are Cameron and Wilson.

National clinical directors and advisors who are sometimes called Tsars are experts that supervise the implementation of a national service framework (NSF) or major clinical or service strategy. Tsars are acting advocates for the NSF or strategies within the NHS. They work with policy and delivery teams to achieve joined up action.

As national clinical directors the role also involves:

  • visiting health and social care practitioners
  • chairing task forces with health and social care professionals and health service managers
  • working with the Royal Colleges to ensure that changes in health and social services are reflected in training and education
  • chairing task forces to develop national service frameworks that bring together health professionals, service users and carers, health service managers, partner agencies, and other advocates.

Despite being at the top of the employment ladder there is still plenty of room for learning and as a result there are plenty of courses for Clinical Directors. A particularly good one is Core Skills in Finance & Business Planning for Consultants & Clinical Leaders, provided by Medicology.

Tags: , ,
Comment

Fewer Deaths by improving communication

Filed Under: The NHS and Healthcare by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 4, 2009

We all know that good communication is key but it is not always practised as the coroners reports are showing, there seems to be a high number of deaths which could have been avoided. Since the rules were changed last year, coroners have been able to write detailed reports following inquests that highlighted a risk of more deaths occurring. Coroners reported that better communication could reduce the number of deaths occurring in hospital.

Out 207 reports between July 2008 and March 2009, 58 arose from hospital deaths, 19 were classed as mental health related, 19 were associated with community healthcare and emergency services and 11 were linked to drugs and medication.

So what is good communication?
Good communication is sharing information is a clear and concise manner with everyone who is involved in the care of the patient, it is also ensuring that the patient fully understands what is going; obviously in emergency situations this is not always possible at the time but after the emergency has passed they need to be told what is going on. This will minimise the chance of the patient possibly taking the wrong medication or committing suicide because they become depressed.

There are a number of courses available which are designed to help improve communication skills. One particularly good one is done by Medicology, Communication Skills for Doctors.

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

The European Working Time Directive (EWTD) Conference

Filed Under: Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
April 9, 2009

The European Working Time Directive (EWTD) will apply in full to trainee doctors from 1st August 2009. The exception to this is doctors who have been in training since 1998. The EWTD aims to protect the health and safety of doctors and also have improve patient care by improving the work hours, rest periods and work-life balance of doctors.

The EWTD says that doctors must have 1 day off per week (24 hours per 7 days or 48 hours per 14 day working period), and a maximum working day of 13 hours, therefore 11 hours rest per day. Additionally they must have a 20 minute break every 6 hours.

If this topic is of interest to you, the EWTD 2009 Conference, London, 26th June 2009, www.ewtd2009.co.uk may be of interest

Tags: , ,
Comment

360 Degree Appraisals

Filed Under: Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
February 8, 2009

A 360 degree appraisal also known as a 360-degree feedback, multi-rater feedback, multisource feedback, or multisource assessment, is employee development feedback that comes from all around the employee (subordinates, peers, managers and may also include a self assessment). The results from 360 degree appraisals are often used by the person receiving the feedback to plan their training and development. The results can also be used for making promotional or pay decisions.

There are numerous benefits to this particular method of appraisal:

  • A study on 360-degree feedback to leaders conducted by Arizona State University has supported the hypothesis that improvement in a leader’s consideration and employee development behaviours will lead to positive changes in employees’ job satisfaction and engagement, and reduce their intent to leave.
  • Individuals get a broader perspective of how they are perceived by others than previously possible.
  • Increased awareness by senior management that they too have development needs.
  • Encouraging more open feedback — new insights.
  • Reinforcing the desired competencies of the business.
  • Clarified to employees critical performance aspects.
  • Identifying key development areas for the individual, a department and the organization as a whole.
  • Identifying strengths that can be used to the best advantage of the business.
  • Supporting a climate of continuous improvement.
  • Starting to improve the climate/ morale, as measured through the survey.
  • Focused agenda for development. Forced line managers to discuss development issues.
  • Perception of feedback as more valid and objective, leading to acceptance of results and actions required.
  • Gaps are identified in one’s self-perception versus the perception of the manager, peer or direct reports.
  • Customizing the questions to one’s organizational competencies.

    • So in summary there are alot of benefits to this method of appraisal but there is one notable criticism:

    A Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index tudy found that 360-degree feedback programs were associated with a 10.6% decrease in shareholder value.

    If you decide to adopt this method of appraisal there are numerous sites that offer a framework for setting up 360 degree appraisals one particularly good site is www.medicology360.co.uk. I can guarantee should you decide to adopt this method it will provide valuable information that will ultimately enhance performance.

Tags: , , ,
Comment