A Realist Evaluation of the usability of the Welsh Community Care Information System (WCCIS) in a South Wales Valley
type: CreativeWork
description: Objective – The focus of this study is to investigate the usability of an integrated health and social care information system (Welsh Community Care Information System - WCCIS) in a South Wales Valley. The evaluation adopts a realist approach to examine whether WCCIS is usable for the end practitioners, how is it usable and for whom and under what circumstances?" (Pawson, 2006). Methods– The thesis is structured using the Rameses II reporting standards for realist evaluations, (Wong et al, 2016). This study adopted four cycles of data collection; realistic synthesis, document collection, two focus groups and one semi structured interview. There were fifteen participants, all of the participants worked in the same geographical area in the South Wales valley and within the health and social care profession. The participants were from diverse roles and included social workers, community psychiatric nurse, administrator and a health board project manager.The framework used for analysis was Wong and Papoutsi (2016). Throughout each data cycle the development of context, mechanism, and outcome (CMO) configuration in relation to the programme theories were continuously developed including their influence to the usability of WCCIS. Results – The results revealed issues in regards to integration, implementation process, training and the usability of WCCIS. All participants envisaged the potential for WCCIS when the ‘teething problems’ have been resolved. The participants considered the process of implementation being a phased approach and not all organisations going live at the same time to have acted as a hindrance to implementation due to still having to access multiple systems to retrieve information. Other examples including the referral process, the inability to email one another within the system, the lack of training and the lack of involvement in implementation and design of WCCIS, affected participant usability. The practitioners were grateful for such functions inc…
abstract: Objective – The focus of this study is to investigate the usability of an integrated health and social care information system (Welsh Community Care Information System - WCCIS) in a South Wales Valley. The evaluation adopts a realist approach to examine whether WCCIS is usable for the end practitioners, how is it usable and for whom and under what circumstances?" (Pawson, 2006). Methods– The thesis is structured using the Rameses II reporting standards for realist evaluations, (Wong et al, 2016). This study adopted four cycles of data collection; realistic synthesis, document collection, two focus groups and one semi structured interview. There were fifteen participants, all of the participants worked in the same geographical area in the South Wales valley and within the health and social care profession. The participants were from diverse roles and included social workers, community psychiatric nurse, administrator and a health board project manager.The framework used for analysis was Wong and Papoutsi (2016). Throughout each data cycle the development of context, mechanism, and outcome (CMO) configuration in relation to the programme theories were continuously developed including their influence to the usability of WCCIS. Results – The results revealed issues in regards to integration, implementation process, training and the usability of WCCIS. All participants envisaged the potential for WCCIS when the ‘teething problems’ have been resolved. The participants considered the process of implementation being a phased approach and not all organisations going live at the same time to have acted as a hindrance to implementation due to still having to access multiple systems to retrieve information. Other examples including the referral process, the inability to email one another within the system, the lack of training and the lack of involvement in implementation and design of WCCIS, affected participant usability. The practitioners were grateful for such functions inc…
author: Howells, Leah
language: eng
date published: 2018
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:39:57Z
provider: University of South Wales
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of South Wales