'Mind the gap!' : a study of leadership and trust and the impact of change for clinical and IT staff of the National Health Service in delivering the NHS Information Technology agenda - Connecting for Health

My thesis is concerned with the challenges the NHS is currently facing in two majorareas. Firstly the White Paper; 'Commissioning a Patient Led NHS' (2005) completely reversesprevious strategies of the position of Primary Care Trusts as provider and commissioning bodies.Secondly this 'about turn' comes right in the middle of an ambitious and on going IT agenda-Connecting for Health (CflH 2002). CfH is a ten year programme to be completed by 2010 whichaims to have a major impact on the way the NHS in England uses information through various ITsystems and Information Systems.Focusing on leadership and trust this thesis will debate the implications these variableshave on the Connecting for Health (2002) agenda for IT and clinical staff aligned to medicine. Iwill investigate the impact of CfH has within Camborough Acute Health NHS Trust1 (Name changed to ensure confidentiality). I will examineand consider how the 'soft' value attributes of leadership and trust affect the implementation ofCfH in the NHS. I will show that with a robust leadership change model how clinicians and IT staffcan work in tandem with positive results through the development of Broadening Horizons; acombined NHS IT/clinical internal leadership programme of education and development aimed atjunior IT staff as an enabler to develop their global awareness and understanding of the NHSworld around them and how this impacts on their inter-relationships with clinicians. BroadeningHorizons is the conclusive stage of this research and developed as a result of my interventionalaction research methodology and my interpretative inquiry.I shall introduce Eriksson (2005) as the change model of choice in motivating changefrom within an organisation. I will support Eriksson's (2005) model with the introduction of Ulrich(1999a) Ouchi (1981) and Toon (2003) as supporting thematic components to describe andconstruct my research into the 'soft1 value attributes of leadership and trust. Research, whichseeks to elucidate questions such as these, will draw upon ideas and methods of inquiry from thediscipline of action research.The challenge to succeed for the NHS is made more acute with the conflicting demandsand tiie fundamental questions relating to political policy changes in recent five years. For thepurpose of this thesis I will aim to address those changes in health and IT that have occurred inthe last five years; hence the title of 'Mind the Gap 1 , which describes the emotional andpragmatic, challenging and collaborative relationships of the NHS and IT. My research whichbegan in 2003 mid way through the Government reform agenda and three years into the CfHprogramme is an ongoing participative action research study involving face to face interviews, apersonal reflection made through the use of a diary, questionnaires and clinical informationsessions to analyse the gap between trust leadership and potential change for the NHS and IT.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral (Level 8)

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Saiger, SM

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1336971

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1336971