Interprofessional Relationships in the Field of Obesity: Data from Canada

Abstract

Background: While it is generally acknowledged that an interprofessional approach is necessary to treat and prevent obesity, there have been few empirical studies examining the working relationships of professionals in the obesity field.Methods: In this article social network analysis is used to examine the working relationships of 111 attendees, representing eleven different health professions, at the first National Obesity Summit in Canada. We assessed the extent of engagement in interprofessional relations across four activities: discussion, gathering information, providing care, and conducting research. We also examined attitudes toward interprofessional practice.Findings: On average, respondents reported that approximately 75% of the people they work with are from other professions. Attitudes toward interprofessional practice were generally positive, and did not vary significantly across professions. Interestingly, attitudes were not related to actual interprofessional relations in our sample. In terms of work type, we found that respondents who were engaged in both clinical and research work had the largest networks and had the highest percentage of interprofessional contacts in their discussion and research networks.Conclusions: Overall, the results suggest that within our sample of professionals working in the field of obesity, interprofessional practice is held in high regard as a concept. The results also suggest that members of professions that combine both research and clinical work are most likely to engage in interprofessional relationships. This article illustrates the utility of social network analysis to assess the extent of interprofessional relationships among those working in a particular healthcare field.

Interprofessional Collaboration and Patient Health Outcomes in Urban Disadvantaged Settings: A Grounded Theory Study

“…Lastly, this study also identified the influence of disparities in health and healthcare as significant barriers to the achievement of better health outcomes via IPCP. Although there is ample literature on the topic of social capital and its link to health disparities from outside the realm of interprofessional care (Berkman & Glass, 2000;Bourdieu, 1986;Islam et al, 2006;Macinko & Starfield, 2001), as well as editorials (Soubhi, 2010) and deductive empirical studies (Godley et al, 2011;Godley & Russell-Mayhew, 2010) that measured social capital in the context of interprofessional care, no prior inductive research studies specific to this phenomenon and to the context of the lives of disadvantaged populations in the US had been identified (Y. Jadotte et al, 2016).…”

“…Social capital, which consists of the sum of the cognitive and structural or interpersonal linkages that connect people together (Islam, Merlo, Kawachi, Lindstrom, & Gerdtham, 2006), has been proposed as a possible theoretical framework by which IPL acts to enhance IPCP (Gloede, Hammer, Ommen, Ernstmann, & Pfaff, 2013;Godley & Russell-Mayhew, 2010) and thereby potentially improve patient health outcomes. However, this proposed mechanism has not been demonstrated inductively or grounded in any empirical qualitative study to date.…”

“…However, this proposed mechanism has not been demonstrated inductively or grounded in any empirical qualitative study to date. Furthermore, while social capital may explain how IPL improves the cognitive and structural functionality of collaborative relationships among health professionals (Godley, Barron, & Sharma, 2011;Godley & Russell-Mayhew, 2010), no explanatory mechanism on how IPCP works to change patient health outcomes, a more downstream but highly prized effect, has been proposed.…”

“…Other studies have found that social capital in the workplace enhances the coordination of care among hospital staff (Gloede et al, 2013), minimizes clinician emotional exhaustion (Driller, Ommen, Kowalski, Ernstmann, & Pfaff, 2011), supports hospital-wide knowledge sharing, significantly influences patient safety outcomes (Chang, Huang, Chiang, Hsu, & Chang, 2012), promotes patient-oriented customer service behaviors that enhance patient and provider satisfaction (Hsu, Chang, Huang, & Chiang, 2011), and is a strong predictor of job satisfaction and quality of life at work (Felix, 2003). In addition, studies have found that interprofessional collaboration among health researchers functions through social network ties and is amenable to a social network analytic lens (Godley et al, 2011;Godley & Russell-Mayhew, 2010). Social capital may thus serve as a missing bridge between IPL, as an educational or practice intervention, and the optimization of healthcare and patient health outcomes, the most prized goal.…”

The HCAHPS Survey as a Potential Tool for Measuring Organizational Interprofessional Competency at American Hospitals Nationwide: A Content Analysis Study of Concept Validity

“…While many studies have devised measures of interprofessionalism at the individual or team level (Archibald, Trumpower, & MacDonald, 2014;Chiu, 2014;Dominguez, Fike, MacLaughlin, & Zorek, 2015;Dougherty, 2016;Dow, DiazGranados, Mazmanian, & Retchin, 2014;Fike et al, 2013;Godley & Russell-Mayhew, 2010;Tilden, Eckstrom, & Dieckmann, 2016;Zabar et al, 2016;Zorek et al, 2016), there is no validated quantitative measure of interprofessionalism at the organizational level that is rooted in interprofessional competencies (IPC). Consequently, there is insufficient quantitative evidence to demonstrate that greater organizational IPC leads to better patient health outcomes (Brandt, 2014).…”