By: Dayna Albert and Marla Steinberg
What we did
In the spring of 2010, CAPTURE posed the following questions to 32 chronic disease prevention practitioners and managers in Ontario who were participating in CAPTURE focus groups:
- What are the challenges and barriers to sharing ‘lessons learned’ about health promotion programming?
- What would make it easier to collect and share ‘lessons learned’?
What we learned
Although practitioners said they want access to the lessons learned from other practitioners (see “Demand is high for real-world evidence’), they were able to list a number of challenges to sharing lessons learned and propose some solutions. These are summarized below:
- Organizational culture
The practitioners observed that many organizations do not recognize the value of information derived from experience and do not find ways to support reflective practice and evaluation-for-learning.
Suggestions to change organizational culture include:
- Undertaking more evaluations.
- Showcasing the learning that derives from making “mistakes”.
- Providing more opportunities for knowledge exchange.
- Lack of a centralized source for sharing
While conferences were mentioned as the most common place to learn about the practices of others, practitioners want this type of material to be more widely accessible.
Suggestions include:
- Providing a web-based portal for conference posters, presentations, and in-house events such as lunch ‘n learn sessions.
- Offering a variety of ways to share information using videos, Podcasts, and blogs.
- Making it easy to post lessons learned.
- Making it easy to search and sort the information.
- Standards and guidelines
Practitioners mentioned that they find it hard to identify the information would be useful and relevant to others.
Suggestions include:
- Developing simple, standardized reporting templates.
- Providing mechanisms for peer review.
- Confidentiality concerns
Many practitioners noted that some organizations may be reluctant to share evaluation findings or other practice-based learnings beyond their organizations.
What we will do
The CAPTURE platform will provide a searchable repository of intervention programs and practices. To help populate the repository, CAPTURE has developed a template that allows practitioners to easily summarize intervention details.
In order to meet the demand for lessons learned, CAPTURE has used the work of Schon[1], to develop a Framework for Reflective Practice. Practitioners entering intervention information will be asked a series of reflective practice questions related to program planning, implementation, and evaluation.
To help address confidentiality concerns, practitioners will be able to control who can access their learnings and reflections.
In order to support the cultural shift that may be required in some organizations, CAPTURE will continue to contribute to collaborative projects that promote the value of learning from practice like the Knowledge Exchange Forum co-sponsored by the Public Health Agency of Canada, Propel and CAPTURE. We will also continue to share our own reflective practices as we develop and grow the platform.
If you are interested in helping us test our reflective practice features or want to use the platform to support reflective practice in your organization, please contact Dayna Albert at Dayna.albert@thecaptureproject.ca.
[1] Schon, D.A. (1983) The reflective practitioner. New York: Basics Books.
