Everybody talking about KMb

by Karen Ritchie: Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

The UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum on 3-4 February is approaching quickly, although we have just finished eating the Christmas cake. The Forum will be a great new year opportunity for me and some of my team to refresh our thinking on getting knowledge into action for health and social care by interacting with a few familiar, but mostly new set of people with similar interests and remits.

For me 2014 is already proving a year for developing new knowledge. I joined a community of practice last week on the practice of dialogue described as ‘a type of conversation that can produced higher-quality thinking and superior outcomes’. Using this in a group setting involves the complementary techniques of advocacy (offering ideas or opinion) with opposition (challenging and questioning) with other input being following (agreement with the ideas and opinions) and bystanding (providing a perspective on the direction of the conversation). Those promoting this approach suggest this will result in a group moving beyond collaboration to creative thinking and new levels of understanding (see for example http://dialogos.com )

I can’t imagine a better outcome for the first UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum – achieving a conversation amongst the participants where we move beyond show and tell and our existing thinking to a state where novel and creative approaches to mobilising knowledge are generated.

Alongside learning about dialogue, I have also been trying to learn more about virtual worlds as we are planning to run a Second Life UK KMb alongside the face to face conference. As with my learning of dialogue this has been restricted to theory at the moment as I need some input to configuring my workplace IT, but I am sure this is not insurmountable!

Although I may not see either of these new approaches to generating and sharing knowledge  move beyond the theoretical at this stage, I am looking forward to learning with a group of like-minded individuals from across academia, the public sector and beyond who are all committed to getting the vast knowledge we all access to translated into actions to improve practice and therefore outcomes for our patients, clients and citizens. See you on the 3 February!