Planning and leading service innovation

This 50-hour online course is aimed at doctors, nurses or allied health professionals working within the health service at various stages in their careers. It is intended to be taken after earlier courses. This course is intended for the clinician who has already begun to investigate the benefits and feasibility for their service of a particular service innovation or related bundle of innovations. Studying this course will help you make sense of what you are learning about how to play a role in taking this innovation forward, working with others in your service and possibly elsewhere.

What you will study

Planning and leading service innovation is the third of six 50-hour online continuing professional development (CPD) courses in the series ‘Leading Health Care Innovation’.  The course assumes that any clinician can play a role in identifying the case for service innovation and then demonstrate some level of leadership in taking this forward. Part of this leadership is however identifying who else needs to be involved in leading the intiative and then successfully recruiting them to the initiative. So planning and leading innovation is usually about working with a team of fellow-innovators. Within this framework, the course introduces you to both classic and contemporary debates as to what is involved in practice in bringing about innovation, and as to why this is so often a difficult process with setbacks that need to be learned from. The learning approach we advocate is that you select concepts and ways of thinking from those we offer that can be brought to bear on the issues you are facing.

This course, like the whole series, is for clinicians who want to understand what leadership in improving services means for them.  It is not intended only or even primarily for clinicians who wish to take on full time medical or clinical management positions. It is for those who recognise that developing health services and finding innovative ways to meet current and future challenges require practising clinicians to show leadership in a variety of ways, working alongside health service managers, planners or commissioners. 

To obtain the maximum benefit from this course, you should previously have completed the sequence of short courses making up the series ‘Diagnosing and Improving Your Service’, within the overall BMJ-OU clinical leadership programme. Ideally, you should also have already completed two other 50-hour short courses in the ‘Leading Health Care Innovation’ series. These are Understanding service innovation (GB087) which helps to crystallise your thinking on various kinds of innovation and their relevance to your service, and Developing cases for innovation (GB088). However, this course can also be meaningfully studied on its own.  

You will learn

On completing this course you will be able to review learning from an initial cycle of inquiry concerning the possible benefits of a proposed service innovation and the factors that may affect its successful implementation. You will be able to evaluate the relevance of the following ‘perspectives on innovating’ in formulating next steps in taking the proposed innovation forward:- innovating over time through distributed leadership; spanning boundaries and building knowledge networks; working with organisational politics; evaluating and learning from failure as well as success. You will also be able to identify directions for improving your own ability to respond constructively and creatively to setbacks in taking innovation forward.

Entry

Although there are no formal academic requirements to study any of our CPD courses, you are expected to have some experience in the field and the course assumes a familiarity with the subject. However If you want to go on to complete the Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Leadership (K04) it is required that you hold an honours degree or equivalent.

This course has been developed in conjunction with BMJ Learning. If you register for this course, they would like to contact you about further learning opportunities. If you do not want to receive information from BMJ, please mark the relevant opt-out box on your registration agreement.

You can register and begin this course at any time during the life of the course. You can study at your own pace and submit your work-based activity at any date before the final submission date for the course. Information about the final submission date is available when you register for the course.

This course counts towards the assessment module Leading healthcare innovation (B833), which forms part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Leadership (K04). If you are working towards this postgraduate qualification you have two choices. You can either complete some or all of the requisite CPD modules prior to registering for B833 or you can register for B833 and the CPD modules at the same time, following a recommended study pattern. Please be aware that the latter option will require you to commit to approximately 12 hours of study per week so you may wish to consider this when making your choice.

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

Outside the UK

This course has been written primarily for a UK context, but will have relevance to other contexts.

If you have a disability

The study materials are delivered online. Learners who use screen readers or who cannot use a mouse will not be able to access some materials or some activities without assistance. Written transcripts of the audio interviews are available on the website. If you are a new learner with the OU, make sure that you have our publication Meeting Your Needs.

Study materials

What's included

All learning materials, exercises, study support and work-based activity are delivered entirely online.

Computing requirements

You will need a computer with internet access to study this course as it includes online activities, which you can access using a web browser.

• If you have purchased a new desktop or laptop computer since 2007 you should have no problems completing the online activities.
• If you’ve got a netbook, tablet or other mobile computing device check our Technical requirements section.
• If you use an Apple Mac you will need OS X 10.6 or later.

You can also visit the Technical requirements section for further computing information including the details of the support we provide.

Learner support

Expert, confidential learner support is available when you need it from a learning adviser, who will respond to you direct within 24 hours. Other support is available via the GB089 forum, library, StudentHome website and computing helpdesk.

Work-based activity

The work-based activity for this course has been designed as an integrated ongoing activity that you submit at the end of your study. It will enable you to reflect on your learning and apply it to your professional work.

Your questions

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