In many trusts, there has been a long-standing gulf between the clinicians and the informatics teams.
On our team, Brendan often uses the example of an IT team buying a system and arriving just to put it in, having engaged with divisional management - but not clinicians.
Needless to say, such projects are far from successful for many reasons. In this chapter, we explore how chief clinical information officers can build relationships with their clinical and their informatics colleagues.
A range of stakeholders
Within any organisation, the CCIOs will need to have the ability to navigate their stakeholders. Stakeholders will include those within the organisation and those in the local health economy.
A good deal of creativity can be used in engaging with stakeholders. Some CCIOs have fully embraced social media, while others focus on face to face communications.
Whichever method is chosen, CCIOs need to know who they must influence, what they need to influence them to do and how they are going to approach it.
Leadership and personal impact
CCIOs need to learn the skills to become the intelligent interface between IT and the clinical organisation. The leadership skills needed to perform this role are many and varied, but it is crucial that CCIOs are respected by all members of their organisation for their clinical expertise. Without this credibility, true clinical stakeholder engagement will not be possible.
Personal impact plays a large part in stakeholder engagement, so CCIOs need to be able to form a clinical network.
Choosing the CCIO path as a career means committing to being a leader within the organisation and wider system. CCIOs need to build on their leadership assets such as persuasion, consultation and gaining consensus from all types of clinicians.
The ability of CCIOs to gel and bond with the informatics teams is also down to good leadership from both sides of the fence. The same is true for gaining the trust of board members (and there’s another chapter of this book on engaging executive colleagues).
Emotional intelligence
The emotional intelligence of CCIOs and CIOs will be a key part of success in building relationships. Messages and communication styles should be adapted to the situation and audience – the ability to “tell the story” is important.
In essence, CCIOs are forming and selling the digital vision to clinicians, and holding the informatics team to account for delivery. Passion and strong communications skills will be required. Infectious enthusiasm and charisma will, of course, help - along with an appropriate dose of humour.
The right language for the right audience
The healthcare IT solutions marketplace is a busy space with hundreds of vendors and thousands of marketing messages. CCIOs will need to have their wits about them, be able to question logically and be able to myth bust when communicating with the clinical community.
They will be the babel fish between the clinicians, informatics, suppliers and the wider organisation. The ability to question and explore the Informatics marketplace and solutions with confidence is required – the common CCIO trait of curiosity will help here.
For CCIOs and informaticians, the opportunity to stand in each other’s shoes and speak each other’s language is key. Exposing CCIOs to Prince 2, ITIL, MSP and so forth will increase their confidence in talking the talk.
Getting them to partake in programmes such as Code4Health or spending time with the technical teams will allow them to have another perspective on the world of informatics. Equally, the informatics teams must have exposure to the clinical.
The right environment
Organisations will also have a responsibility for providing the correct environment for CCIOs to build successful relationships. A culture of openness and understanding is needed, where CCIOs and their colleagues can have open and honest discussion.
Chief information officers as well as CCIOs hold responsibility for making this structure and culture work. Our experience at Bolton is that having CCIOs and informatics staff working in the same office for a session or two per week builds relationships.
Impromptu discussions and sharing a cup of coffee allows positive regard to be built. With staff being visible and accessible in the same environment, a sense of team is built. A shared team Christmas lunch is often a sign of good relationship having been constructed!
Help is out there
Sharing stories with other CCIOs in the CCIO Leaders Network and looking at the lessons learned will help you in finding ways to develop relationships in your organisation. The Health CIO Network equally starts and furthers debate on how we can do this better.
Conclusion
Overall, building good relationships between CCIOs and informatics as well as the wider organisation is a journey. It will take time for the CCIO role to come to maturity and offer full value to the NHS.
The correct clinicians in the right environment with appropriate resources should grow into the intelligence clinical client for clinical informatics.
About the author: There are four CCIOs at Bolton. David Haider is a consultant ophthalmologist, Simon Irving a consultant in acute medicine, Brendan Lane a charge nurse for A&E and Phillipa Winter therapy manager for the elective care division. They have all been in their formal CCIOs posts since mid-2014.