How to Achieve Effective Clinical Engagement and Leadership when Working Across Organisational Boundaries – Practical Recommendations

 

The recommendations within this practical guide are based on the knowledge gained from actual cross organisational change projects.

 

These change projects aimed to improve the quality of patient care delivered. They have helped to identify the characteristics and impact of high quality clinical leadership, engagement and team effectiveness, when working across organisational and professional boundaries, particularly when focusing on the patient journey.

 

These recommendations aim to pick out the main elements that facilitate clinicians to lead change across organisational boundaries, and to offer the basic tools and techniques required whilst exploring how these can be applied. These include contextual factors, skills and individual behaviours.

 

It is hoped that by sharing this knowledge, it will provide a foundation for clinicians and managers to confidently lead more cross-boundary working, thus improving the patient experience.

 

The key findings are:

 

• Clinicians need to lead cross-boundary working
• Change can be successfully achieved by effective cross-boundary projects and patients benefit
• Patient and user involvement is crucial to successful cross-boundary working

These recommendations are aimed at frontline clinicians and managers who want to improve the quality of care for patients across organisational boundaries.  They provide practical information to consider before and during a cross-organisational project, thus helping to enhance successful outcomes.  Additionally, these recommendations highlight to policy makers the fundamental components that need to be in place for effective cross-organisational working, partnership and collaborations.