Interprofessional Primary Care Teamwork: Investigating Experiences of Health Care Providers

Context: Effective IP collaborative practice and teamwork is proposed to improve quality of care, patient safety and health outcomes. While interprofessional teamwork has been evident in hospitals for some time, a better understanding of team dynamics and factors influencing IP practice in primary care settings is needed especially from the perspectives of primary care providers, including those training future clinicians.

Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore the experiences of providers regarding the processes fostering team-based care in a single academic primary care clinic.

Study Design and Analysis: A phenomenological case study approach aimed to identify the factors that foster team-based care as conveyed through individual interviews and focus groups. Data was inductively coded, based on interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Setting: All data was collected on site at a University of Manitoba academic primary care teaching clinic.

Population Studied: Data was gathered from eleven members of the interdisciplinary team representing five disciplines.

Outcome Measures: Eight individual interviews and one focus group discussion were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim.

Results: This team’s care was conceptualized as an interrelated web and is framed by three themes: 1) modalities of communication that support team-based care; 2) development of interdependent working relationships and; 3) the administrative and organizational support that is required to achieve the desired team stability. Modelling interprofessional practice and collaboration benefited both team members and family medicine residents, playing an essential role in enabling a more diverse set of skills while challenging the power hierarchy.

Conclusions: Working together, health care professionals can attend to a wide range of patient’s health care needs in an efficient and effective manner. The overarching concept of an inter-related web characterizes interprofessional teamwork, while effective communication and collaboration support interprofessional collaboration in primary care settings.