Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
in meeting their own needs, whereas the needs of the greater group
were not deemed to be that important. This could actually hinder
the progress of the whole process. A possible solution was a bigger
drive to motivate the stakeholders to attend all the meetings.
“Probably to this extent, I have certainly been involving in
developing a number of programmes, but I think this time, we
made significantly more effort to involve them” (Participant 3: 56-
59). These sentiments were echoed by the next participant: “I
think there was, it occurred to me that there had been a concerted
effort to ensure that there was stakeholder input. And I already
knew . . . from Smith Hospital 10 and I was already a member of the
joint clinical advisory group, I already knew that discussion had
been going on. I guess that the effort that the department was
doing, I guess they were doing all that they could. That the final
meeting that we had and the panels that we had when we were
being approved and the approval, that was really evident”
(Participant 5: 76-82).
In conclusion, one could say the overall impression leaned more
towards a total satisfaction with their role in the process on the side
of the stakeholders. The few negative comments can not be seen
as an expression of discontent with the process. These comments
are underpinning a wish that all the stakeholders utilised all their
opportunities to a maximum.
Category 5: Leadership
One of the most important aspects of successful collaboration is
having a strong leader, who is capable of guiding the stakeholders
through this long and at times rather unpleasant process (Knapp &
Lowe, 2001:13). The stakeholders in this project identified a
specific person as being a very able leader. “I was really impressed
with Agatha’s 11 ability to lead. I was impressed with her ability to
manager her staff, to do it in a way that I could not have done it”
(Participant 1: 137-140), and “She acknowledged everyone’s
strength. I found her ability to manage the workload amazing”
(Participant 1: 142-144), and “One of the outstanding things about
* as the leader is that she listens and they acknowledge. I just rang
her and said ‘what do you teach for family violence’” (Participant 2:
191-195). It would seem that the leadership of this person stood
outside of all criticism. Some stakeholders actually stated that they
tried to steer certain aspects of the process along particular ways in
an attempt to support the leader to an even greater extent.
“Hopefully that supported Agatha in her, in seeing me having a
desire to work for change and I suppose as an outsider pushing
things in a change of process. People take it from you, when they
10 = Name of stakeholder changed
11 = Name changed
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