Getting planners to take notice
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Getting planners to take notice An operational researcher's experience of helping a community group to influence the design of a new maternity hospital
Max Moullin
that September where the proponents of the most
There has been much activity in Community OR following
popular methodologies each gave a lucid presentation of had been how their methods worked in practice.
the OR Society's initiative to extend the use of OR to community groups. This article describes one such project, assisting a group of women who wished to influence the design of a new maternity hospital. This
I
particularly impressed with the Strategic Choice
Approach, and felt that this could be very appropriate for Community OR. lt seemed to fit in well with groups who wished to work in a non-hierarchical way, and also (unike some other methods) it is easy to explain and therefore would enable me to be seen primarily as a "facilitator", rather than as some "expert" using an approach which the clients didn't fully understand.
was Max Moullin's first venture into Community OR, and a frank account is given of his experiences, together with some feedback from members of the client group.
My background before embarking on this study was similar to that of many working in OR. I had 10 years' experience of OR in industry and government but had not
I therefore resolved to become more familiar with Strategic Choice, so that t could use it if the occasion
used any of the problem-structuring methodologies
collectively known as "soft' OR which are often applied in
arose. However, as in mainstream OR, I decided to go to the first meeting without any preconceptions, and to see what developed.
such group situations. Also, although I had been a member of several community groups, I was somewhat apprehensive of working with them as an OR worker rather than as an ordinary member. However, I felt very
A third question I asked myself was what I was hoping to achieve by my participation. In many meetings - in the community and elsewhere - there is often a lot of discussion but seemingly little to show for it when it is over, If by the end of the meeting, I reasoned, the women felt pleased with the outcome, then my role could only have been positive. Initially, however, my main aim was to gain the confidence of the group.
positive about the Society's initiative, and decided to give it a go and look for a suitable project.
Such an opportunity came in September 1988, when some women I knew expressed their concerns about a new maternity unit that was being planned for Sheffield in the mid-1990s, which they felt would be designed from the point of view of the medical staff rather than from that of the users of the service. Despite these concerns, they felt powerless to do anything, and it was only when I mentioned my involvement in the new Community OR Unit that they decided to get together, with me, for an initial meeting.
My experiences At that first meeting, which I hosted in one of the
Sheffield Polytechnic conference rooms, only five women
attended,
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