Building the OD professional of the future: creating a blueprint for new models of organisational development practice in the NHS

The National Health Service (NHS) in England provides vital care to the population, free at the point of delivery. Demographic changes in society and advances in treatment of illness have resulted in a population that is living longer with complex long-term conditions. For the NHS this means a shift from episodic reactive care to predictive, preventative and ongoing care with patients at the heart of the approach. The 2014 Five Year Forward View set out a direction of travel for services to be integrated in order to break down barriers between organisations, moving from old to new models of care. Organisational Development (OD) practitioners tasked with supporting the change efforts required to move to new models of care were struggling to get the traction needed. Inquiries led by the NHS OD community revealed a transactional bias to their activities, using traditional models of ‘diagnostic’ OD. The new models of care prompted me in my national role supporting the development of OD practitioners to explore if the present practice of OD was fit for the future. Over a two-year period, fourteen OD practitioners from across the NHS worked in an Action Research group using co-operative inquiry methods to answer the question how do we build the OD professional of the future? We explored four areas in depth: locating ourselves in practice; new models of OD; phenomenal practice in the dynamic now; and building the OD professional the future. Our work resulted in a deeper understanding of the landscape and climate of OD in the NHS. We created a blueprint for OD practice which incorporates Diagnostic, Dialogic and an emergent category of Dynamic OD into a new architecture of OD for the NHS. We revealed that strength is the core of phenomenal OD practice in the dynamic space and developed a route for the OD professionals of the future to find their way to a new way of working that will meet the ongoing changing needs of the NHS. The research programme concluded that working in multiple interdependent complex adaptive systems will be the new normal for OD practitioners in the future NHS. To succeed they will need to stretch into unexplored areas of practice and find or create micro-communities of learning to shape and strengthen their presence. The process of co-operative inquiry itself created collaborative behaviours and as such there should be support for OD practitioners across the NHS to come together and carry out inquiries into their own practice and continually build and rebuild themselves

Reply to the comment by Carmelo Anile on the paper "Complexity analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid pulse waveform during infusion studies"

Veterinary technology is an emerging profession within the veterinary and allied animal health fields in Australia and affords graduates the opportunity to contribute to the small but growing body of literature within this discipline. This study describes the introduction of a contextualised assessment task to develop students’ research capability, competence and confidence in professional writing, and to engage them with the academic publishing process. Students worked in self-selected dyads to author a scientific case report, of publishable standard, based on authentic cases from their clinical practicum. Intrinsic to the task, students attended a series of workshops that explored topics such as critiquing the literature, professional writing styles and oral presentation skills. Assessment was multi-staged with progressive feedback, including peer review, and culminated with students presenting their abstracts at a mock conference. Students reported the task to be an enjoyable and valuable learning experience which improved their competence and confidence in scientific writing; supported by a comparison of previously submitted work. Linking scientific writing skills to clinical practice experiences enhanced learning outcomes and may foster the professionalisation of students within this emerging discipline

Impact of Hyperkalemia and Worsening Renal Function on the Use of Renin Angiotensin Aldosterone System Inhibitors in Chronic Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138255/1/cpt746.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138255/2/cpt746_am.pd

Changing Societal Expectations and the Need for Dynamic Asset Lifecycling and Obsolescence Management

Current revolutions within the consumer electronics market are having dramatic effects upon how businesses are able to deliver their services with the continued embedding of technology within our lives. Conversely, this is currently having a direct impact upon long life assets with life expectancy in the region of 15+ years, an impact, which is believed to only increase. The term asset in this context refers to systems and their internal components, for example security systems and their orthogonal components i.e. intruder detector components, CCTV cameras, recording equipment, automated security doors, controls etc. This is a rather middle to top-level view upon the term asset and components; you will find literature referring to components as the individual electrical and material elements of a product. The mismatching of lifecycles due to contrasting market conditions is driving unforeseen obsolescence investments across the Built Environment, highlighting the current neglect of obsolescence within static asset lifecycle planning. As society changes, so do the expectations of service delivery from the Built Environment. The pressures imposed by these changes upon Facilities Managers will demand resultant changes in how services are delivered, maintained and supported throughout their useful lives. It is the combination of societal demands for a greater connected, interactive and smarter Built Environment and the effects of technological change upon obsolescence that will be covered in this paper. This paper will build upon a current Engineering Doctorate project into obsolescence and asset management to speculate both the importance of developing a dynamic approach to planning asset lifecycles and possibly how this would materialise in the future. Evidence will be provided in the form of a case study, reviewed literature and current live trends, supporting the title of this paper. The main conclusions include the growing evidence that what is being witnessed across the Built Environment will likely increase and also that more advanced industries have experienced the same problems previously. It is therefore seen as a growth area for the Built Environment to reduce the impact of obsolescence and ensure that service delivery continues to meet societal expectations

Understanding the role of obsolescence in PPP/PFI

In 2013 the Guardian newspaper reported that the UK Government had acquired £300 billion worth of capital costs and unitary payments within the formally known Private Finance Initiatives – now Public Private Partnerships. This paper is not about the economics or moral debate upon the success and failures of PPP’s within the UK, but rather the untold story of the impact of obsolescence upon the integral asset systems which support the service delivery. Prisons require supportable and maintainable security systems, the same can be said for government/defence buildings, not to the mention the life critical systems within hospitals and clinics across the country. However, there is an untold story, which is impacting the through life or lifecycle costs to support and maintain key asset systems, driving additional lifecycle expenditures that may be unforeseen. This paper contains evidence of the scale of the financial impact of obsolescence through obsolescence driven investments, not least to mention the potential operational impacts if systems become unsupportable. This paper begins to create a foundation for future research focusing on obsolescence and how best to monitor and mitigate its effects

Identifying and Managing Asset Obsolescence within the Built Environment

Obsolescence in practice commonly occurs in two forms; the asset in question is no longer suitable for current demands, or is no longer available from manufacturers. Most research surrounding obsolescence has targeted short lifecycle components such as electronics or software (2-5 years). There is little consideration of low volume, long-life assets (20+ years) that are commonplace within the built environment (e.g. Uninterruptable Power Supply Systems, Building Management Systems and Fire Alarm Systems). This paper evidences the importance of identifying asset obsolescence within the built environment by observing 'lifecycle mismatches' within a live case study of a ten year old UK Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This paper develops and proposes an original assessment tool, identifying obsolescence within the built environment and empirically tests it within the case study. The methodology and results combine to evidence the importance of obsolescence and the contractual and financial risk it poses. The model is transferrable and scalable thus allowing larger portfolios to be considered. The levels of identifying obsolescence within long-life assets are increasing, whilst the lifecycles of certain component groups are decreasing; posing a growing problem for future Facility Managers

Functional co-monotony of processes with applications to peacocks and barrier options

We show that several general classes of stochastic processes satisfy a functional co-monotony principle, including processes with independent increments, Brownian diffusions, Liouville processes. As a first application, we recover some recent results about peacock processes obtained by Hirsch et al. which were themselves motivated by a former work of Carr et al. about the sensitivity of Asian Call options with respect to their volatility and residual maturity (seniority). We also derive semi-universal bounds for various barrier options.Comment: 27 page

Robust statistical methods for point of sale designs, the example of healthcare snack and drink vending

Purpose: The experiment introduces nutritional labelling, healthier products and product placement designs to the hospital vending machines, to promote healthy lifestyles. / Design/methodology/approach: The site where this experiment happens is a major London hospital, serving over a million patients every year. In the experiment, the hospital’s snack and drink vending machines are redesigned. The impact on product sales are then analysed using robust statistical methods. / Findings: Nutritional labelling has a statistically significant impact on product sales. Less of the unhealthiest products are sold. Healthier products and product placement designs have a larger impact but with less statistical significance. They require further testing. / Research limitations/implications: Experts in service operations can use this experiment’s regression modelling methods. The methods are ideal for measuring change over time in counting data sets in complex real world environments. / Practical implications: There are suggestions for practical vending service change in this research. They are in line and add a practical example to Government policy guidance. / Social implications: People using the redesigned vending machines have more opportunity for healthy lifestyle choices. / Originality/value: The experiment provides statistical evidence in support of catering for healthier lifestyles

Evidence for a Single-Spin Azimuthal Asymmetry in Semi-inclusive Pion Electroproduction

Single-spin asymmetries for semi-inclusive pion production in deep-inelastic scattering have been measured for the first time. A significant target-spin asymmetry of the distribution in the azimuthal angle φ of the pion relative to the lepton scattering plane was formed for π^+ electroproduction on a longitudinally polarized hydrogen target. The corresponding analyzing power in the sinφ moment of the cross section is 0.022±0.005±0.003. This result can be interpreted as the effect of terms in the cross section involving chiral-odd spin distribution functions in combination with a chiral-odd fragmentation function that is sensitive to the transverse polarization of the fragmenting quark