The characteristics, qualities and skills of practice developers

Abstract

There is a growing interest in practice development as a systematic process for the development of quality patient care. Whilst there is a range of accounts of practice development in the literature, little work has been undertaken to develop an understanding of the systems and processes involved and there is even less on the roles involved in practice development. This paper explores in particular the characteristics, qualities and skills of practice developers, i.e. professionals who have formal responsibility for developing practice in organizations. The paper represents part of a larger study exploring the conceptual basis of the term 'practice development'. Data for this part of the project were collected through literature analysis, seven focus groups involving 60 practice developers and telephone interviews with 25 practising nurses with experience of working with practice developers. The data were analysed using cognitive mapping processes. Four role functions are presented in the paper, as well as qualities and skills needed to operationalize the identified role functions. A clear picture of the skills and qualities required by practice developers emerges from the data.

Clinical leadership and innovation

“…Jonas, McCay and Keogh see clinical leadership as the key to promoting high-quality clinical care and transforming services to achieve greater levels of excellence [18] . Contributions to understanding the concept of clinical leadership and characteristics of clinical leaders have been offered by a number of authors and a great deal has been added to an understanding of this topic as a result [1,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . As such, a summary of clinical leadership attributes are identified as: motivating and inspiring, approachable, clinically knowledgeable and clinically competent.…”

Practice development: promoting quality improvements in orthopaedic care… as well as ones' self

“…In addition, the specific skills and activities began to become differentiated in describing the work those working in PD that still remain predominantly nurses. Garbett and McCormack's substantial study (2002) analysing the concept of PD formed the basis for further description and postulation of the characteristics, qualities and skills of practice developer's (McCormack and Garbett, 2003) that remains ongoing (Manley and McCormack, 2003). However, it is now possible to at least view the terrain of PD (see Fig.…”

“…Description of characteristics, qualities and skills in practice development (based onMcCormack and Garbett (2003)). …”

Using practice development methodology to develop children’s centre teams: Ideas for the future

“…16 • Practice development is intended to improve person/family focused care. 21,22,23 • Links between practice development and education are strong but education does not automatically produce improvements in practice.…”