The Partnered Learning Project

Project Handbook

A Guide to Early Planning for the Development of an Interprofessional Collaboration and Education Program in a Healthcare Setting

3.0 Managing the Project

Questions to Consider

1. Program Oversight and Direction setting: Will you establish a Steering Committee that includes representation from the various organizational units to be directly served and broad representation of professional stakeholder groups? Click here for more questions...

Will the Steering Committee have specific roles and responsibilities for the Committee as a whole and for individual members? Is it desirable to arrange for Committee member alternates to ensure full representational input at each meeting?

2. Administrative co-ordination: Is the role of administrative co-ordination assigned to someone who has both the skills and the willingness to fill this function? Click here for more questions...

Should the administrative co-ordination required for the project be a dedicated position rather than be incorporated into someone’s existing workload? Is this a function that it would be more efficient or appropriate to purchase? How complex is the project? Does the complexity level suggest that project management skills may be required to keep things co-ordinated, on time, and on budget?

3. Organizing and Scheduling: How will the work of the Steering Committee be recorded and communicated? Click here for more questions...

Who needs to have access to project development and implementation records and for what purpose? Can these records be designed to satisfy, in whole or in part, accountability reporting requirements, which the project may be subject to? Does the format make it easy to identify Committee decisions, task assignments to members, bring forward items and their respective due dates? Have strategies and timetables been established to ensure Committee direction and decisions are made in a timely way throughout the life of the project?

4. Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluating: Has the required information been identified and is it being gathered in such a way that is supports responsible monitoring, reporting, and evaluation of the project design and implementation work? Click here for more questions...

Have clear processes and responsibilities been identified from the outset to ensure valuable information is not lost and the accountability requirements for the project can be fully met? Is there a means of gathering and receiving unanticipated issues and feedback from stakeholders?

Our Story

PLP Challenges and Strategies

A project that involved three separate institutions necessitated a fairly large Steering Committee. Our Challenges in scheduling meetings and achieving good attendance increased due to the number of members.

The Committee identified the best day and time for the majority of members and scheduled regular (monthly) meetings for the duration of the project right at the outset. These meetings were generally well attended.
The requirement for research ethics approval at three separate organizations made it challenging to spread the implementation activities out in a realistic way over the available project time.

A full project timeline was developed for the team to consider the time required for each team and student placement cycle and the resources required for each. This helped establish a shared understanding of the timing options and limitations which had to be considered when working with all three organizations.
The wide-ranging discussions needed to plan the implementation sometimes made it difficult to decide exactly what information should be captured in the minutes.

Standard templates for the Agenda & Minutes made it easier to both prepare and to find key information in the meeting agenda and minutes. Minutes were circulated electronically shortly after the meetings for review and correction and then finalized electronically. This avoided using time in the meetings to review prior minutes and ensured members had the final record of the meeting in a timely way.

Each Committee meeting had a main topic on the agenda. The overall project timeline directed the timing and order in which Committee decisions were required to facilitate the implementation. These shared discussions guided team members and working group activities, ensuring options brought to the committee for decision reflected the general direction given by the membership. These early discussions also allowed committee members to indicate when they wished to be involved in the more detailed planning of certain aspects of the implementation.

The participating organizations expected to benefit from knowledge gained through their participation. How best to capture and carry forward the institutional learning so that it could be utilized in the future, however, was not clearly identified.

A standard institutional report template was developed to capture some of the culturally specific info and lessons learned during implementation at each partner organization.
The complexity of this project (including 3 hospitals, different levels of IPC/IPE program experience, geographic distances) created planning and co-ordination challenges to ensure the project was successfully completed within the available time. The ambitious schedule for the project meant the steering committee would need to function efficiently and in concert from an early stage. Yet the steering committee was comprised of members with diverse institutional cultural influences and experience in research. Establishing a common understanding of the project methods, strategies, goals and objectives, and ensuring that this information was accurately communicated was an important challenge to ensure participant support and engagement.

The project budget included funds to hire a part-time admin support for the full length of the study. A team member with project management skills assisted in organizing the committee’s tasks into a logical order. The team adopted an information package that provided an overview of the study, illustrated the participant experience for each team (professionals & students), showed the entire project timeline with key events, and identified the project deliverables. This document served as a communication tool ensuring consistent and complete information was provided each time the project was introduced.

to top

Project Implementation

Questions to Consider

1. Creating Awareness: Do you have or are you able to secure visible support for the project from senior management? Click here for more questions...

Do you have a communications strategy to get initial word out about your project? Have you developed a standard set of communication aids that can be adapted quickly to various situations but still ensure the message is complete and accurate? Have you field tested your documents to ensure your communication is understandable?

2. Timeliness: Will the project leaders/decision-makers meet frequently enough and with adequate time to make the needed implementation decisions in a timely manner? Click here for more questions...

Is the project implementation timeline realistic and respectful not only of the schedules of the Committee members but also of other participants / learners whose engagement is being solicited in the project development and implementation work?

3. Roles & Responsibilities: Have implementation leadership and co-ordination roles been specifically assigned and do the designated individuals have the confidence of the group? Click here for more questions...

Has it been decided by whom, how, and when the actual work of implementation will get done? Are these roles understood and accepted by everyone involved? Have the linkages and communications between everyone involved in the implementation been clarified?

4. Implementation Work: What role will the oversight body members have in the actual implementation? Click here for more questions...

How will those responsible for the implementation work communication with the Steering Committee if different players are involved? If the Steering Committee is involved in / responsible for the implementation, will the Committee members do their implementation work during the committee meetings or will this be done via separate working groups? Are planned working groups of appropriate size to facilitate scheduling, realistic workload sharing, and input from subject matter experts? How will appropriate expertise be brought into the planning and development work if this expertise is not fully covered through the Steering Committee membership?

5. Resources: How much flexibility is in the project budget to pay for services and resources along the way? Click here for more questions...

Are there established procedures for accessing funds in a timely way, when needed? Have you identified all other resources that will be required to complete the project? (E.g. meeting rooms, projectors, catering etc.) Has an assessment been done to determine the availability of these resources, the time and process involved in securing these resources? Will their availability impact the delivery schedule or arrangements?

6. Recruitment: Are there recruitment or eligibility criteria for participants to ensure an appropriate match between learner needs and the program? Click here for more questions...

Are these criteria used and presented in a positive manner when recruiting participants? Is there sufficient numbers of eligible participants to sustain the program as planned? Is there an effective way of registering participants? Has a threshold attendance number been established to make the activities viable?

7. Relevant and Reliable: Was a needs assessment completed prior to the project? Click here for more questions...

Has the project established meaningful learning objectives for participants? Was the curriculum / material pilot tested? Is there a documented curriculum and process for delivering events? Is there a means of carrying on if a key presenter or facilitator becomes unavailable on short notice? Are there plans for providing the participants with feedback?

8. Evaluation: Is there an appropriate evaluation process in place to determine the success in meeting these objectives? Click here for more questions...

Has the project established a broader set of success criteria for the design and delivery of the program? Is there an appropriate assessment process in place to monitor progress against these criteria? Has it been determined what type and level of issues should be brought back to the project team for review? Is the program open to changes along the way, based upon feedback and monitoring? If the program may be changed, under what circumstances would this be contemplated?

Our Story

PLP Challenges and Strategies

The fixed schedule of when student placements would occur often restricted the available options for scheduling team workshops, since the workshop was intended to be delivered before the students began their placement.

The project IPE lead investigated and co-ordinated information and options to identify the best possible time to recruit students from multiple professions for the IPE tutorials. Staggered student placement schedules meant that sometimes one or more students had started their placement prior to the workshop.

In early sessions we did not require team members to register for the workshop. We hoped that this open approach would increase likelihood of people deciding to attend when the date arrived. This approach made it difficult for the facilitators to anticipate numbers and fully prepare for group activities.

In Phase II, workshop participants were asked to indicate their intention to attend the workshop. This did not seem to inhibit attendance. Reminders encouraged people to show up and some who had not confirmed in advance did attend.
The first three workshops all occurred within a very short time-frame, allowing little time between these sessions for adjustments to the workshop content or agenda.

A period of time between Phase I and Phase II workshops enabled the project staff time to review and modify both the IPC and IPE curriculum, based on our monitoring and participant feedback.

to Tips on Selecting Teams