Nurses – AQuAS Blog

Nurses in Barcelona adopt the culture of dialogue to define their professional future

5 Apr

Asking ourselves questions, reformulating questions, rethinking the way we want to be, what we need and how we want society to know and see us. This is, without doubt, a difficult exercise to carry out as individuals but it is even more difficult to do this as a profession.

Agreeing with each other is by no means easy. Training, method and a desire to do so is needed. Having these premises clear, we initiated the RESET project at the Official College of nurses of Barcelona (COIB).

Guided by the company Diàlegs, specialised in mediation in health, we initiated an unprecedented process of participation in the nursing profession during which we went out into the territory to find out what the concerns, needs, wishes, complaints and proposals of nurses in the province of Barcelona were.

The process lasted the whole of 2017, after which our corporation was given the commission to develop the strategic lines on which the college members of Barcelona want us to work along with thousands of ideas that they would like to process.

The difficulty of the project was considerable. Apart from the geographical distances that existed and the difficulties in getting nurses involved, there was the added difficulty of coming up with a dynamic that had to be participative so as to facilitate environments of conversation, discussion and consensus among the hundreds of female and male nurses who have different professional realities and therefore varying priorities.

The Diàlegs company took on the challenge of making it possible by means of a process lasting 12 months during which participative methodologies were used to define the profession as it is today and that of the desired future. The framework for the project was based on the principles, values and methodologies of mediation, which led to a broad and necessarily inclusive view of the differences and susceptibilities of the nursing community.

The RESET project was carried out in three different stages: in the first stage, open debates were set up in circles of group discussion. The circles enabled a comprehensive collection of very valuable data which formed the basis on which to develop the following stages that consisted of two days of consensus: one to agree on the diagnosis of the situation the profession finds itself in now and another to define the future, with the aims and lines of action to be developed.

As a result of these three stages of the RESET project, 52 group discussion circles with 925 participants were set up, that is, with people who participated one or more times. 3,762 ideas were collected as well as some proposals for the future, with nine thematic areas and 65 lines of action decided on by agreement. The level of satisfaction was very high and the participants showed a high level of interest in continuing in the project, repeating participations in the three stages.

It must be said that the key to the success of the process was the large number of people that committed themselves to the project right from the start. We are referring to what we called the Driving Group made up of 208 people (with representatives from all over the territory, all positions and susceptibilities) who worked from the start both in the co-design of specific aspects as well as in the diffusion, organisation of group discussion circles and participation in the events for consensus.

Beyond the results of the RESET project, which are, in the end, a commitment to change with implications for the upcoming years, we still have much to learn and this can no doubt be extrapolated to the professional disciplines in health in which we are organised through colleges. We need to continue asking ourselves questions both in and out of the college organisations to positively drive change and development in all the aspects which bring us together as professionals. Continuity in the culture of dialogue is one of the most important challenges that came out of this fascinating process. This was the message that the nurses who worked in the Reset Project gave us. Therefore, from the COIB, this is our commitment.

Post written by Núria Cuxart Ainaud, director of programmes at the COIB, and Glòria Novel Martí, founding director of Diàlegs.

Towards research in nursing with a (greater) impact

15 Mar

What is it that makes a particular research have an impact on society beyond the strictly academic and which is truly transformative? Can a whole series of actions be planned in the way that one follows a cooking recipe which leads directly to the desired social impact? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The impact is multifactorial and depends on so many different elements and actors that it is difficult to establish a formula to guarantee it.

However, having said that, the fact that there is research which has a particular social impact does not mean that it is a totally random phenomenon and that there is no way of predicting, facilitating or promoting it. Years ago, from the Research Assessment group at the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS), and with the help and complicity of the International School on Research Impact Assessment, ISRIA, we identified a series of facilitators with regards the impact of research.

A fundamental facilitator is people, and the values, culture and capacity of leadership they have. Two identical results of research can have different impacts if the capacity of leadership, drive and will to get beyond academic impact is different. But this is still not enough. The strategy, organisation, collaborations and openness that institutions have will be a great facilitator or barrier for the researchers that have carried out the research.

Finally, both people and institutions will need two indispensable elements in order to aspire to having an impact: on the one hand, a close and effective communication with the different social actors that can play a role in transferring the results of research, and on the other, an approach focused on the participation of all these key players.

To paraphrase Confucius when he said “explain it to me and I will forget, show me and maybe I will remember, involve me and I will understand”, it is all about involving all the necessary actors to bring about a real change and make research transformative.

It is in this context that SARIS (Catalan acronym) came into being, the Assessment System of Research and Innovation in Health. It is a strategic tool which emerged from the PERIS (Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation in Health 2016-2020) with the aim of assessing the research carried out in health in Catalonia from the perspective of always wanting to facilitate and influence so that it has an impact beyond academia. To do this, the motivation and involvement of actors has been defined as a key factor for its development.

Last November, we started a series of participative sessions with nurses who were selected from the PERIS 2017 call in which a line of intensification of nursing professionals was financed.

It is important to emphasise that launching this line with nursing research makes full sense for three reasons: on the one hand, one of the thematic priorities of the PERIS is clearly that of “the development of clinical and translational research which facilitates the growth of scientific and technological knowledge, putting special emphasis on primary care agents and research in nursing”. In addition, the PERIS 2017 nursing fund has been the first to come to an end and it was appropriate to address ourselves to them first and foremost.

Last but not least, the conditions in which nursing research is carried out, with patients and their recovery as its central goal, makes it especially appropriate to ensure that this research has a direct impact on health. Hence, it is important that the research done in nursing be capable of demonstrating the impact that this group of professionals has because it can give it a comparative advantage with regards other biomedical disciplines. Indeed, nursing research is intrinsically translational.

Therefore, the first session centred on identifying the influential actors and in empowering the nurse to carry out an effective communication which amplifies the productive interactions needed to transform the results obtained into benefits for a better and improved health for patients.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the nurses for their participation (readiness and motivation) who attended of their own free will and in their time off work ensuring thus that the session was a success. This demonstrates that from the AQuAS we have leverage to give support to those researchers who are motivated to driving the impact of their research.

At present, we are preparing other sessions that will enable mutual learning between researchers and the assessment agents at the AQuAS.

Post written by Núria Radó Trilla (@nuriarado).

Jornada SARIS: Participación en recerca Barcelona, April 4th 2018.

Nurses with more responsibilities

17 Dec

Sense títol

Montse Moharra (@mmoharra), Dolors Benítez and Anna García-Altés (@annagaal)

The Department of Health provides the basis so that the collective can prescribe medication.

Nurses have increasingly more challenges on their plate. The health care is permanently immersed in innovative processes that improve health care and the services for citizens.

Since last summer, a working committee formed by members of the Department of Health, Catalonia’s Council of Nurses Colleges and Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida and Girona Official Nurses College is developing a proposal to rule that this group may indicate, use and authorize the dispensing of drugs and medical devices.

In addition, the Department of Health, the CatSalut, the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) and other nurse entities have signed another agreement to improve aspects of the management autonomy, necessary so that its effectiveness and benefits can be exercised and collected by nursing professionals. Thus, among other aspects, it’s intends to continue improving the participation of these professionals in clinical management with more presence in the participating organizations, recognizing nurses’ professional leadership in primary care and improving the organization and management of the sector’s simplification and streamlining.

OIGS’ innovations in nursing management

Catalonia’s Observatory of Innovation in Health Management (OIGS), which incorporates advances within the Catalan health system to innovate different areas of management, has several experiences that focus on improvements affecting nurses. Indeed, two of the initiatives that received AQuAS quality certificate last September during the Third OIGS Conference were focused on innovations within this group.

One of the acknowledged experiences was ‘Integration of skilled nurses into the anaesthetist team for deep sedation in the field of digestive endoscopy’, driven by the service of anaesthesiology and section of digestive diseases and endoscopy unit of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. This project has established a special unit formed by anaesthesiologists and nurses specializing in sedation which has improved the service and support ensuring greater safety in this type of processes by giving more responsibility to nurses.

The ‘demand nurse’ experience of Castelldefels Health Agents (CASAP) was also awarded the quality certificate. This project has improved agility and increased encouragement in its primary focus of fostering nursing as a gateway to the system. Thus, it was able to attend to a series of consultations, such as traumas, vomiting and diarrhoea, skin lesions, genitourinary problems or emergency contraception. This initiative allows offering a quick and effective health care to citizens and the general practitioner can devote more time to other services.

Besides these two certified projects from over 180 projects registered in the Observatory, there are other initiatives that emphasize nurses as protagonists of the improvement in health management. This applies, for example, to projects for the implementation of online preoperative services or remote medicine to cure ulcers, activation of a specific high-resolution unit in rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases that would further the nurse collective’s response capacity or the standardization of care systems. You can view these projects and other innovative experiences in the OIGS’ portal.