Thursday, June 26, 2008

Primary research opportunity - librarians, knowledge transfer and patient safety

Colleagues:

Over the years I have expressed interest in looking at how knowledge management/transfer/sharing can affect patient safety. I think there is a lack of empirical "evidence" to help us and our colleagues really understand where the failures can happen in this process. We need these studies in order for us to fully design and implement effective and sustainable solutions!

There may be an opportunity out there to make some headway to fill that gap!

The World Health Organization's patient safety alliance has just announced a small grant program:

Small Grants for Patient Safety Research. WHO Alliance for Patient Safety.

They are looking for innovative ideas, new "young" researchers, multi-organizational projects --- which sounds good for those of us without primary research experience.

Areas of interest listed in the program's research priorities that may be most relevant to this blog's audience include:
  • Inadequate competencies, training and skills
  • Lack of appropriate knowledge and its transfer
  • Latent organizational failures
  • Health information technology and information systems

So - if anyone is up for working up an application, let's share some ideas here. There are a mix of folks that could make up the team -- librarians, researchers, human factors experis, organizational behaviorists, clinicans - maybe we can brainstorm some concepts and identify a group to submit a project. And I certainly recognize time constraints we all have --all the better reason to band together as appropriate.

Let's chat and thanks for considering this. I hope to hear from some of you.

Lorri

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