How to turn a process into a roadmap

May 12, 2009 12:49 PM

I'm designing a step-by-step procedure that caregivers can use to create cultural change in hospitals. The doctors I'm working with want the tool to look and feel like a "roadmap for change" and I'm not sure how to get it to look like one.

Over the past few weeks, I've helped develop a tool that can help caregivers (doctors, nurses) increase the patient safety culture of their hospitals in a systematic manner. Basically, the process teaches people how to change the culture of their hospitals iteratively, by creating solutions to specific safety issues that also start to change the culture. The entire procedure is a six-step process that starts with identifying a specific safety issue and ends with measuring the success of the implementation/changes in the hospital's culture.

While I'm happy with the content of the tool, the doctors I'm working with really want the tool to look like a "roadmap to culture change," not like a six-step process involving check-boxes and open-ended questions. I'm hoping that some visually-inclined me-fites can suggest ways to turn this algorithm-looking thing into something more like a roadmap. Examples of something would be especially useful.


ps - In case it matters, this project is for a non-profit. The tool is going to be used to teach caregivers how to create safer hospitals and will be given away for free.

posted by eisenkr to media & arts (5 comments total)

It's hard to know for sure without seeing what you're talking about, but could it be turned into a flowchart or decision tree?
posted by dersins at 1:00 PM on May 12

As someone who might use such a tool, I wouldn't want to lose the actual content in the conversion to a "roadmap."

Can you create an overview of the steps that looks like a roadmap? Perhaps making each step a stop along a route from "current culture" to "culture change" (or something more clever)? Perhaps each "stop" has a different road sign shape or building associated with it, that you could then use in the body of the document as part of your headers. You could put a mountain range or stream in where things might get difficult. Or stoplights where careful consideration is warranted, etc. Or maybe not.

You might also want to show the route as circular somehow, since it isn't really a journey from point A to point B, but a continuous process of improving. I actually think the roadmap is a poor analogy for culture change because of this. So, making it circular could help illustrate the ongoing nature of the work, or make it look like you're endlessly going around in circles (which wouldn't be too far off of reality, but probably not what you want to convey). Perhaps instead of circular you show a sign at the end of the map that says "next stop, another safety issue!" or words to that effect.

It sounds like the docs got attached to the idea/phrase "roadmap to culture change" without really thinking carefully about whether it makes sense. I've been there!
posted by jeoc at 1:27 PM on May 12

You might find very thought-provoking and helpful the chapter in Atul Gawande's "Better" on getting hospital doctors and staff to wash their hands more.
posted by shivohum at 3:51 PM on May 12

It sounds like the doctors want something visual, although roadmaps aren't necessarily visual- what you already have could be considered a roadmap. It might help to probe the doctors about what exactly they mean by "roadmap" and the types of things they envision in this tool.

Here are a couple visual roadmaps:
http://www.unitedwaymc.org/PDFs/News/RoadMap.pdf
http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-article/roadmap-achieve-and-sustain-change

And here is a roadmap for cultural change:
http://www.odnetwork.org/events/conferences/conf2005/followup/T13-1.pdf
posted by emilyd22222 at 4:39 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]

Given the subject matter, it seems the most appropriate visual starting point is not a roadmap, but the painted lines and directional signs which help people navigate the hallways of big hospitals. Could you mock up an intersection in a hospital corridor and use two diverging lines to represent the old and new hospital cultures?
posted by embrangled at 4:30 AM on May 13