Leading cultural change in health care: practice-based evidence.

Abstract

Background: Management literature provides bookshelves full of theory on how to lead change projects. Leading and facilitating change projects in such complex contexts as the implementation of integrated primary care zones or compassionate cities and communities however, asks for more than just a theory. 
 Objective: The workshop aims to present and discuss a hands-on model from a practice based evidence point of view. It is based upon and documented by the experiences and examples of both the change projects in Compassionate Bruges and Herzele and the transition project towards integrated care and the creation of primary healthcare zones in Flanders. The practice evidence is substantiated by a literature review of very different domains, amongst which that of implementation theory.
 We start by presenting the frameworks, values and beliefs the facilitators/project teams used to start these projects and share the observations of where they stayed upright or rather failed. We discuss our observations on the causes of these results as well as the alternative strategies we developed to cope with the obstacles we encountered. 
 We than present a first framework in which we try to capture the key elements of leading change in complex systems and the levers for handling the interdependence between those elements. We invite participants to check their own experiences against ours and each other’s. This will happen in smaller discussion groups. By thoroughly debating experiences, we evaluate to which extent our model is coherent and applicable in other healthcare change contexts. We conclude with a plenary exchange and wrap-up.
 Learning outcome: At the end of the workshop, participants will have obtained increased awareness of looking at change processes in health care from a complexity point of view; increased awareness of the underlying processes of cultural change; increased awareness of the key elements a leader/facilitator can steer upon to create the best possible context in which cultural change can take place; new inspiration through input of fellow participants on how to further implement the change process they themselves are in.