Has the #CKF13 changed my life?

Wow.  What a week!  And to think: when I left London I had no plans beyond attending the Forum…

The Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum this week brought together 142 knowledge mobilisation professionals from 12 nations to expand the growing global knowledge mobilisation family. 

Held at the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation in Mississauga, Toronto, there were great presentations on almost as wide a range of topics as you can imagine.  I particularly enjoyed:

• The partnership between York University Knowledge Mobilization Unit and a community-based organisation called United Way.

Their story told how the partnership been community workers and academic researchers has been a developing process of trust; how despite a willingness to collaborate it still took five years for the partnership to become really solid.  Applying research in actual settings – ‘digging in’ and working in the community with people who know the community to solve the community’s problems is the only way to work.

Michael Johnny (York U) and Jane Wedlock (United Way) presented their work in a breakout on addressing the issue of youth homelessness by moving upstream in the system from emergency response to community-based prevention, and Daniele Zanotti  (CEO United Way, York Region) led a plenary session too (see his TED talk here for a flavour).

• Soufflearning: a European approach described by Norbert Steinhaus, which provides tailored training solutions to small and medium sized enterprises to meet their needs.

My favourite example was the training provided to a flower shop to help the staff deal with drunk customers.  I confess I hadn’t considered this a hazard for flower sellers, but now I think about it it makes sense.  I can picture the scene:

1. a guy stumbles out of the bar, thinks “I’m gonna bein trouble when I get home”,
2. stumbles past flower shop,
3. stops,
4. stares at shop window for a long time,
5. wobbles,
6. has ‘brainwave’,
7. stumbles into flowershop and mumbles incoherently to the seller who steps backwards involuntarily to avoid the fumes…

The staff identified this as an area they were concerned about and training was provided.  Ta Da!  Now the staff are more confident in their work.  I bet you don’t see ‘dealing with drunk flower buyers’ on the bog-standard list of training options from the local further education college.

• The work of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) as described by President and CEO Robyn Robertson.

Robyn’s growing confidence in what they do, and their ability to do it well, has allowed TIRF to move away from the traditional perpetual grant funding-go-round.  They now how people seeking them out – providing something in the region of $1.5mCD per year to do what they like to do.  What a fantastic idea!  Getting paid to do the research that you love.

There were also great ideas put forward I can take home and plug straight in to what we do.

1. Multi-author blog as described by Nicole L. Vaugeois from Vancouver Island University for their Tourism and Sustainable Rural Development project.  This is something CLAHRC NWL doesn’t do but easily could.  We have great people – clinicians, researchers, patients and support staff – who could all put their great ideas into print once in a while and help us tell and share our stories.
2. Knowledge Mobilisation Jeopardy game as chaired by David Phipps from York U.  We could instantly turn this into a Healthcare Quality Improvement game.
3. Kwicky Konnections speed networking format (which would obviously need to have those very important Qu’s and C’s put back in for the Brits), could be fitted right into the CLAHRC NWL collaborative learning events to help people meet more people as projects grow and change.

But, I’ve now been here in Canada for nearly a week.  Not a whole week.  Nearly a week.  I arrived last Saturday night and it’s now Friday afternoon.

Since the Forum ended on Tuesday I’ve met with people who have been so unbelievably kind and generous with their time, knowledge, insights and wisdom:

• Peter Levesque, President of the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization, is an entrepreneurial connector who takes passion for this stuff to a whole new level with the KMBW1 numberplate on his car (apparently KMBW2 is on the Goldwing).  He knows everyone and is related to the rest.  He’s given me the chance to meet people who will change my life and is determined I will make my dreams a reality.
• Sandra Miller and Kiran Kapoor from Workplace Safety and Prevention Services, who shared how they’re using positive social norms to influence drivers to care better for their own safety. This is so relevant to healthcare where staff have to choose to do the right thing even when they’re busy, rushed, tired and stressed.
• Maureen O’Neil, Nina Stipch and Erin Leith from the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, whose enthusiasm is outstanding.  They are passionate about building capability and capacity of Canadian healthcare staff to identify, use and implement research into practice and make improvements.  The models they are using in terms of fellowships and group projects, and working and learning in networks and collaboratives are similar to the CLAHRC NWL approach, but perhaps further evolved and embedded as they’ve been working on this for longer.  There are great opportunities to share learning here.
• Laura Lennox’s mom, who is a little dynamo of energy and who has taken my picture in front of the parliament building, and picked me up off the floor behind it after I did the classic tourist ‘walking one way while looking the other the to read the writing on the foundation stone’ trick.  Thanks mom!

In the week ahead I’m also looking forward to meeting up with:

• Brian Peever, from University of Ottawa, who’s kindly offered me a tour – and to let me pick his brains about his learning and partnerships work along the way.
• Graeme Barlow, who might just be able to be able to collaborate on the development of a healthcare improvement game.
• Heather Bullock from CAMH, and her team so we can throw knowledge around about improving healthcare the quality improvement way.
• David Phipps from York U Knowledge Mobilization Unit so he can make me laugh a bit more and also teach me how he’s been so successful in winning the academics over to the idea of mobilising their knowledge.
• Melanie Barwick from SickKids (hopefully) who will be able to tell me more about their knowledge mobilisation practitioner courses.
• Ross Baker from University of Toronto whose professional interests say it all (patient safety and adverse events, quality improvement, organizational theory and behaviour, organizational culture, performance measurement and balanced scorecards, health services delivery, health care system, knowledge transfer)
• Ron Saunders from the Institute of Workplace Safety – the research end of the WSPS work.

And, if I’m lucky and manage to fit a few more hours into each day I might even manage a little trip to Niagara Falls and possibly even some socialising on the side

If you want to see tweets from the Forum search for #ckf13.

CKF14 will be in Saskatoon, June 9 and 10, 2014.

Click here to see what happened the week after!