Grant: Project Grant

Collaboration is widely touted as a solution to healthcare's challenges, from fatal errors to escalating costs. Canadian governments, institutions of higher education and hospitals have acted on this rhetoric, and invested time, money and personnel resources to improve collaborative practice. Decades after the initial calls to improve care delivery through collaboration, the literature connecting these investments with positive patient care outcomes remains exceedingly sparse and inconclusive. We know that failures of collaboration and communication often harm patients, but educating providers for collaborative practice has proven to be very difficult, and rarely leads to improved patient care. The goal of this project is to draw on historical and social scientific evidence to transform how we teach healthcare professionals to collaborate. In contrast with the pre-existing literature, we see collaboration as a social construction: an idea that was championed by individuals and organizations who successfully integrated it into education and policy. This new framing will help us reach two related aims. First, it will make the development of the idea of collaboration visible through a historical case study. Second, it will allow us to document the impact of the rise of collaboration as a solution on current patient care practices. Providers will be interviewed about their views on collaborative healthcare delivery, on how collaboration has changed practices in their work environments, and on how education for collaboration could be improved. They will also be observed as they work, to help identify the factors that facilitate teamwork. By engaging healthcare professionals and leaders at every step of our project, we will ensure that we maximize the reach and impact of this project. This grant will thus help us prepare the next generation of healthcare professionals for collaboration through evidence-based education.