Change Management in Health Professions Education

About

Change management is an important leadership skill to develop in HPE as change is a constant phenomenon that occurs in academic and administrative reforms. It becomes imperative for faculty to sustain the change and act like change agents to motivate colleagues for successful implementation of tasks. CBME implementation and accreditation processes are a few examples where sustaining change assumes significance. In this regard, UCHPE is conducting a one-day workshop on “Change Management in Health Professions Education” to empower faculty with skills for effective leadership. The aim of the workshop was to provide faculty with the necessary knowledge and skills to manage change effectively. The workshop was attended by 30 participants from the Faculty of Medicine, and the Faculty of Allied Health and Basic Sciences, SDUAHER. Dr Vinutha Shankar briefly introduced change management and explained the challenges for academic leaders. Dr KNV Prasad spoke about the different campaign approaches for change management and the five elements of an effective campaign. This session was followed by the topic – Change agent and the skills one should have as a change agent. It was delivered by Dr Vinutha Shankar. Mr Lokheshwar and Dr Vinutha Shankar demonstrated a role-play on convincing a higher authority for a project approval within 2 minutes. This role-play was part of a ‘2-minute elevator speech’. Participants were divided into groups of 3 members where 1 was the observer, 1 was the person seeking permission and the other was a person with higher authority. Each had to describe their role as part of a group activity. Dr Ashwini Shetty explained the ‘force field analysis’ by giving suitable examples for identifying forces for and against a particular change. This was followed by lunch. Dr KNV Prasad spoke about stakeholders and how to identify them using different matrices. This was followed by a group activity where participants were given a case scenario where they had to identify different stakeholders and perform force field analysis. Dr Vinutha described the different ways to build consensus and used the previous case scenario’s responses to analyse thematically and form a consensus. The last session was followed by participants’ feedback and a group photo.

Objectives

• Identify change management as a significant component of effective leadership.
• Describe approaches for change management.
• Apply stakeholder matrix & force field analysis for analysing factors influencing change.
• Identify factors to create change champions.