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Prof Christine Edwards
Business School
Kingston University
Kingston Hill
KT2 7LB
T: 0208 547 2000
c.edwards@kingston.ac.uk
Explaining Health Managers' Information Seeking Behaviour and Use: The Enform Project
The National Institute of Health Research Service Delivery and Organisation Programme (NIHR SDO) has awarded ILMH £316K for a two year project.
Prof Christine Edwards will lead the investigating team, which also includes Dr Stephen Gourlay (Kingston), Dr Steve Gillard (SGUL), Prof Vari Drennan and Prof Mary Chambers (FHSCS), Prof Steve Iliffe (UCL) and Dr Pinar Guven (UWA). Dr Rebekah Fox, Reseach Fellow at Kingston, and Chris Smith, SDO Management Fellow at Kingston, will also contribute.
The Project
While the concept of evidence based practice is well established in medicine we know very little about health service managers' use of information or evidence in decision-making. This project is designed to fill this gap and identify the barriers that prevent managers from making better use of information and the factors that facilitate it. Change management projects in four NHS Trusts (Two acute, one mental health and one primary care) and a national survey are being used to explore when and how managers decide they need information, where they look for it, how they evaluate it and how they use it. It also investigates the role of knowledge “intermediaries” such as librarians, knowledge managers, consultants and trainers in this process. The researchers are using traditional methods for management research- in- depth interviews and questionnaires, and a relatively novel technique (q-methodology) to get realistic data about people's attitudes and opinions.
The research team have expertise in management research and health and include members from the Business School, the Faculty of HCS, SGUL UCL and UEA. The relevance of the research to management practice and service users has been ensured by a further 61K award for an SDO management fellow- a manager seconded onto the research team from an NHS trust-, and a user panel who are involved in every stage of the study. The results will feed into health manager’s education and training and, more generally, provide guidance in better practices for those using and supplying information.
Posted: 28 May
