The purpose of this sub theme is to assist participants in career planning and improving their personal effectiveness.  There will be emphasis on practical exercises to assist the participants in identifying and setting relevant career goals and managing themselves.

This theme focuses on the unique context of the design, delivery and management of healthcare services. Beginning with service design and how it impacts on service delivery, we will also look at service quality, customer input and the service encounter, all of which play an important role in the delivery of efficient services. Disruptive advances in communications and technology are redefining the interaction between healthcare professionals and patients, so care must be given to managing customer expectations throughout the service experience. And while no service is perfect, the common reasons for service failure will be examined along with the usefulness of various tools in enhancing quality and service recovery.

The seminar agenda will focus on 4 key aspects in designing and delivering effective services. In the first section, Understanding Services, the key characteristics of services are explored, emphasising the facilitating nature of services and service process design. The second section focuses on Service Design & Innovation, using global examples from across the private and healthcare sectors to illustrate the importance of making effective use of technology and innovation in service design and delivery. The third section focuses on Service Quality & Improving Service Delivery, using common approaches to continuous improvement such as Lean and Six Sigma to better understand how to measure and improve service performance. In the final section, we look at how participants can apply the theme’s key concepts in their workplace to improve service delivery.

The Health Services, like many other public and private businesses globally, are facing the biggest financial challenges in over eighty years. In this highly interactive one-day module, we will explore the role of clinical leadership in managing the change process.  Adopting an action learning approach, the module will aim to provide you with the tools and mind-set to successfully drive change even if you are not the authority figure.

This topic presents a framework for understanding the dynamics of negotiations and preparing appropriate strategies. The issues of trust and influence are also explored. Considerable emphasis is placed on the practical side of negotiation, through tailored negotiation role-play and discussion of real negotiation situations and challenges.

The themes review the fundamentals of business language and enables participants to read and understand financial statements.  The second theme uses this business language to enable participants to measure value for health care and to prepare funding / development proposals / requests for the hospital and the HSE. 

Credits are earned through continuous assessment. Participants will not sit exams. All assessments are completed by participants individually and  are set out in the Participants Handbook.

Kathy is a Lecturer at UCD, teaching Management Consultancy and Global Business on a number of MSc and MBA programmes at the Smurfit School. Prior to joining UCD, Kathy worked for GE as a Six Sigma Black Belt, and as a Consultant in PA Consulting Group’s Government and Public Sector practice. She continues to engage in consulting work in the not-for-profit sector, and is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) with the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers (IMCA). Kathy was recently appointed as an Academic Fellow of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI), the global professional body of the management consulting industry.

Karan is Associate Academic Director at Smurfit Executive Development and earned his PhD at University of Alberta, Canada in 2008. Before entering academia, he served as a Captain in the Indian Military. Karan has previously worked in India, Canada, and Spain and served on the faculty of the Instituto de Empresa Business School, Spain. His research, teaching and consulting interests are in the areas of leadership, stakeholder theory, behavioural strategy, institutional theory, and emerging markets. Karan has worked with a number of the Ireland’s leading organisations including CIE, Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia and An Garda Siochana.

Gearóid is a management and leadership development Consultant with over 40 years’ experience of implementing real change. He has gained extensive experience and knowledge working in healthcare, financial services, technology, manufacturing, policing and higher education.  His career has both an Irish and an international context, having worked across Europe, Middle East, Asia and the US.  Gearóid is a highly sought-after management consultant and executive coach who has 30 years lecturing experience in leadership and enterprise management on MBA and Masters programmes in many Universities across the world, including Ireland, Hong Kong, US, Sri Lanka, Bahrain & Jordan.  In Ireland he lectures in several 3^rd level institutions including the Michael Smurfit Business School, and the Institute of Leadership at the RCSI.

In his consulting business Gearóid works with both public and private sector organisations to help them to realign their processes and ways of working to maximise the return on their efforts.  He achieves this through several different interventions including the implementation of Lean and Scrum.  After obtaining his Computer Science degree from Trinity College Dublin, he went on to study Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard, received his MBA from UCD.

Gerardine is an academic and senior lecturer in accounting and taxation at the UCD School of Business and has served as Head of the Accountancy Subject Area. A BSc (Pharmacology) graduate of UCD, Gerardine qualified as a chartered accountant and chartered tax advisor with KPMG (Dublin) and holds a PhD in Accounting from the National University of Ireland, Cork. Gerardine's research interests span the disciplines of taxation, accounting, economics, medicine and sociology. Gerardine has been engaged as Principal Investigator in the conduct of EU funded comparative research projects that have addressed key policy issues. Gerardine is currently a Principal Investigator for the EU Seventh Framework funded study Diabetes Literacy, a cost effectiveness study of diabetes education tools and was Principal Investigator for the European Health Literacy Survey. Gerardine is also a Principal Investigator within the Applied Research for Connected Health at UCD with expertise in costing and health economics. Gerardine has been an expert evaluator for the European Commission Seventh Framework programme 2013 and Horizon 2020.

Gerardine is a member of the Audit Committee of the Health Service Executive and is a board member of the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management.