Flexible facilitators

Surrey 2009

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines facilitating as: "The act of making easy or less difficult; to free from difficulty or impediment; to lessen the labour of; as, to facilitate the execution of a task."

To achieve this successfully, the facilitator must not only consider the task, but also remain open to the specific needs of the individual, according to Alison Mills, Primary Care Data Quality Facilitator at NHS Surrey.

Alison explained: "In order to help practices successfully navigate the hoops and hurdles of data quality, facilitators must remain flexible to take into account the varied workloads and personalities that they deal with.

"It is important to try many different ways to support practices; one method may help one practice whereas another may require assistance in a different way."

The four facilitators at NHS Surrey are responsible for helping their practices achieve a good standard of data quality, Paperlight accreditation and IM&T DES Component 2 accreditation.

To help practices ensure data quality, the team runs data quality audits, feeding back the results to the practice team. The practice staff then help to produce an action plan, which they follow with input from the facilitators where required.

In order to allow practices to be more independent and deal with issues specific to them, the team produces locally-defined MIQUEST query sets as well as providing training to enable practice staff to run PRIMIS+ queries using CHART.

Alison continued: "All training is made specific to the practice, taking into account individual and group requirements as well as existing skills. Recent practice-based training sessions include Read codes, data quality, Paperlight practice and the IM&T DES."

The facilitators also coordinate user groups and workshops, in addition to producing resources to help practices and PCT staff deal with any data quality issues.

Alison explained: "Local user groups help practices to maximise the use of their clinical computer systems by sharing real-life examples. We are there to support the practices, with clinical system trainers on hand to answer any questions, pass on advice through Q&A sessions and share hints and tips.

"Drop-in sessions are held throughout the county enabling us to answer specific questions, while we also produce literature to give bite-size pieces of information which can be digested easily."

Since beginning these sessions, Alison has found that many more practices are achieving Paperlight and Component 2 accreditation, and relationships between practices and the PCT have become stronger.

She continued: "Practice staff are going about their normal day-to-day work; it is up to the facilitator to make it easier for them to achieve this."