Research funding application success

WBS Professor of Public Management Graeme Currie has been awarded a Service Delivery and Organisation grant worth over £308,000 by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

The research, entitled The knowledge-brokering role of middle-level managers in service innovation: managing the translation gap in patient safety for elderly care, focuses upon the translation and utilisation of evidence for patient safety in the context of elderly care.

Graeme explained, "Elderly care is increasingly important given changing population demographics globally, but has been relatively neglected in terms of resource allocation and academic study. This neglect has resulted in significant patient safety and quality problems, which are now being addressed by this research. We focus upon the most common areas that compromise quality of care for the elderly - the problem of patient falls, the management of medicines, and the transition of patients between the acute hospital and other organisations, such as those delivering social care.

"We are particularly attentive to the need to integrate mental health care with acute and social care, to tackle the 'ticking time bomb' of dementia."

The study, which began in March 2011, will conduct around 150 interviews with external and internal producers and users of patient safety knowledge, complemented by ethnographic observation and social network analysis, to generate a deep understanding of the processes through which knowledge is used or brokered into, within and across health and social care organisations. Grounded in the larger social and political context, the aim is to develop a model for knowledge brokering that will inform frontline action to improve the quality of elderly care.

The project's co-investigators are Professors Andy Lockett and Justin Waring from Warwick Business School, Professor Leroy White from Bristol University and Professor John Gladman, a geriatrician at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. Participating partners are Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Nottinghamshire and Nottingham City PCTs, and neighbouring local authorities.

For further details about the research, please contact Research Fellow, Nicola Burgess: Nicola.burgess@wbs.ac.uk or tel: 024 7652 8222.