Faculty Member, Facultyl of Health Sciences
University of Southampton, School of Health Sciences
About
Organisation and Delivery of Care Research Group
The Organisation and Delivery of Care Research Group undertakes research into key contemporary health services issues in order to provide evidence that will influence and improve policy and practice for patients and carers, professionals, managers, commissioners and policy makers.
Research Group members:
Professor Peter Griffiths
Professor Judith Lathlean
Professor Sue Latter (Head of Group)
Professor Carl May
Professor Catherine Pope
Dr Jo Turnbull
Dr Bronagh Walsh
Our aim is to understand, evaluate and explain health care organisation and delivery processes, systems and outcomes. Our research questions are shaped by health policy, technological innovation, professional practice, and consumer needs and views. Research within the ODC Research Group is translational, applied and contextual. Our work spans a wide range of clinical conditions and health care contexts. It focuses on three areas of activity
:
Knowledge: the transfer, organisation and implementation of knowledge in practice
Practice: new practices and emerging professional roles
Workforce: re-configurations and enabling and measuring workforce effectiveness
We have major strengths in quantitative methods including observational studies using primary and routinely collected data sets, and evaluation (trials and other controlled or quasi-experimental studies), qualitative methods including ethnography, action research and case study; as well as the use of mixed methods, systematic, scoping, and theory building reviews and the secondary analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.
Our research leads to ideas and evidence that have a real impact on the organization and delivery of care, and we collaborate with colleagues nationally and internationally, and in disciplines including medicine, nursing, sociology, psychology, pharmacy, health economics and web science. The group is a member of the NHS Confederation’s Health Services Research Network, a national network of academic, NHS and commercial organisations specialising in health services research.
ODC Research Group programmes of research
Evaluating and enabling workforce effectiveness
Lead: Peter Griffiths, with Bronagh Walsh
Research examines how change in the composition, organisation or management of the workforce affects patient and staff outcomes and experiences. This work also considers how the outcomes of such change can be measured and used to further improve practice. The programme has focussed on staffing levels, skill mix and role substitution in the nursing and medical workforce and organisational developments such as the Productive Ward and intermediate care. The work has also involved: the development and assessments of quality measures such as Failure to Rescue and a set of Nurse Sensitive Outcome Indicators for ambulatory chemotherapy, patient day measurement and fall incident reporting in the hospital setting, as well as study of emergency admissions avoidance in older people.
New roles and service configurations
Lead: Judith Lathlean
Research includes the evaluation of innovative roles in nursing, midwifery and health care, such as the consultant practitioner, modern matrons, nurse registrars and mental health practitioners. There is also a focus on improving ways of organising services particularly within the acute sector, mental health (including forensic settings) and women’s health. This programme further encapsulates research into new ways of educating health professionals.
Non-medical prescribing and medicines management
Lead: Sue Latter
Research focuses on evaluating the quality, impact and effectiveness of prescribing and medicines management by nurses and other health care professionals. It includes a focus on evaluating health professional: patient communication about medicines and its impact on adherence, as well as evaluation of the cost and effectiveness of decisions professionals make about prescribing medicines.
Self-management in long term conditions
Lead: Sue Latter
Research focuses on patient experience of self-management of long term conditions and evaluating the impact of health professional interventions for self-management of long term conditions.
The dynamics of interactions and relationships
Lead: Carl May
This research explores the changing dynamics of professional-patient interaction in terminal care, acute illness and recovery, and chronic disease management. It also explores strategies for Minimally Disruptive Healthcare in the face of increasingly complex and fragmented health services, and the transfer of burdens of treatment across the boundaries between home and health services.
Implementing clinical interventions and innovative health technologies
Leads: Catherine Pope and Carl May, with Bronagh Walsh
Research on policy change, re-organisation and new ways of delivering healthcare and clinical interventions, such as different models of workforce configuration or service innovation, for example in urgent care and services for older people. Exploring the contribution of theory and developing explanatory models – notably normalisation process theory (see www.normalizationprocess.org) to understanding the design, development and implementation of interventions in health care.
Every day healthcare practice and technologies in use
Leads: Catherine Pope and Carl May
Investigating how technologies (notably computer and web-based) are –or are not – brought into successful use in a range of different health care settings
