Barbara Searle

Project: Understanding facilitation in the IMPlementing IMProved Asthma self- management as RouTine (IMP2ART) study: using video ethnography to aid healthcare improvement

Supported self-management including action plans and collaborative reviews significantly reduce the likelihood of asthma attacks. However although guidelines (e.g. British Thoracic Society and SIGN) recommending this have been in existence for decades their implementation in the environment of primary care has proven challenging: simply providing guidelines and expecting evidence based knowledge to be integrated into everyday practice is now known to be insufficient.

Effective facilitation has been argued to be a ‘key ingredient’ in implementing healthcare improvement, however the process of facilitation is complex and understanding what works, in what context, and with whom, is still in its infancy. In order for facilitation to be delivered well, a greater understanding of the relational, team, individual and task based factors that play a part in the success or failure of facilitation is required.

This project will employ a video ethnographic approach to studying facilitation as carried out by facilitators working with teams in various primary care settings. The research will be part of the IMP²ART study which aims to help general practices embed supported self-management into routine asthma care, and will look at how facilitation is employed in this particular context.

About me

Barbara is a social scientist with a background in Anthropology and Archaeology and an MA in social research methods. She has an interest in the application of these methods in health care contexts and has previously worked on the 3C Cough Complications Cohort study and in Oncology Clinical Trials.

Project update

Barbara is currently assisting the IMP²ART study team with the process evaluation of the pilot, and has had the opportunity to aid in the development of a system for evaluating facilitation. This has stimulated thought about how the team evaluate facilitation and has provided the impetus to conduct a literature review on how other scholars have approached the issue of how facilitation is evaluated. Her next milestone is her 9-month review.