Sue Roberts

Abstract - Knowledge Management Project: Supporting the Emergency Services Collaboration

"Reforming Emergency Care" (2001) emphasised that emergency and
urgent care should be seen as a whole system, including A&E Departments and
hospitals, social care, primary care, NHS Direct, walk-in centres and
ambulance services. The report proposed the creation of Emergency Services
Collaborative to "cascade knowledge and to spread best practice throughout
the service." The Collaborative is a time-limited national programme
supported by funding from the NHS Modernisation Agency.

Northumberland Tyne & Wear Strategic Health Authority set up a 12 month
pilot project, which started in November 2003. The main aim of the project
is to support staff involved in the Emergency Services Collaborative in its
aim of "supporting local teams in the NHS make improvements in their
organisations by looking at how they work, making changes to benefit
patients and learning from others". This will be done by using knowledge
management techniques to support learning; knowledge sharing;

promoting best practice; developing care pathways: and re-designing services. The project aims to ensure that all members of the Collaborative have easy

and rapid access to relevant knowledge, integrated from research,

experience and data.

There are two subsidiary aims for the project:

a. to pilot the use of knowledge management techniques by frontline
clinical staff to support their work, which may be applied to other clinical
areas; and

b. to pilot the use of knowledge management techniques to support the work
of a care stream or network, which may be rolled out to other such care
streams or networks across the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Strategic
Health Authority (SHA) area.

The presentation will give details of how the project was started; the
establishment of the services offered; the development and maintenance of
the knowledge service provided in collaboration with the community of
practice; and finally the exit strategy for the project at the current time
of the presentation.

This page was last updated on: 8 July, 2004