Identifying behaviours

What are the behaviours in new models of care?

Much of new models of care is aimed at changing what people do, how they do things, who they work with, and how frequently they do things.  If this is the case in your new model of care, then there are benefits for you in thinking behaviourally.

The kinds of behaviours that might be of interest are those discrete and specific parts of practice that, if done differently, would lead to an improvement in something important. Examples of behaviours include:

• Starting to deliver a clinic in the community rather than in a hospital setting once a week
• Offering smoking cessation advice, adding health promotion to a team’s other duties
• Discussing concerns with parents / carers when a child might be abused or neglected
• Referring clients to a new integrated team
• Prescribing fewer antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections
• Following a new checklist
• Offering health or social care consultations over Skype
• Shortening the length of ward rounds

New models of care involve many people doing many things differently, so it can be complex to identify one or two behaviours to start with, but very beneficial in helping teams to prioritise and move forward.

What are some benefits of helping teams identify behaviours?

One senior clinician leading service transformation in a heart failure team said the behavioural approach helped her structure her thinking and communicate clearly with her team:

‘Teams Together helped us define what we’re trying to do into just two or three changes. This means I’ve been able to help the rest of my team understand what we’re aiming for. As a result, I’ve seen that they’re more engaged, less overwhelmed and now they are actively exploring how to help put this into practice’.

How do I do this?

It can be useful to begin with meetings and short discussions with individual or groups of team members, asking open questions to focus on behaviours. Some key questions may be:

• What does the new model of care mean for your team’s day-to-day practice?
• What will look different, before and after the change if it was a success?
• What are the team doing more or less of as a result of the new model of care?

For more information, see Briefing 2: How can taking a behavioural approach help integrated teams start to transform practice?

Check your understanding

Are the following examples changes in behaviour?