Examining the nature of interprofessional practice: An initial framework validation and creation of the InterProfessional Activity Classification Tool (InterPACT).

Examining the nature of interprofessional practice: An initial framework validation and creation of the InterProfessional Activity Classification Tool (InterPACT). J Interprof Care. 2017 Dec 13;:1-10 Authors: Xyrichis A, Reeves S, Zwarenstein M Abstract The practice of, and research on interprofessional working in healthcare, commonly referred to as teamwork, has been growing rapidly. This has attracted international policy support flowing from the growing belief that patient safety and quality of care can only be achieved through the collective effort of the multiple professionals caring for a given patient. Despite the increasing policy support, the evidence for effectiveness lags behind: while there are supporting analytic epidemiological studies, few reliable intervention studies have been published and so we have yet to confirm a causal link. We argue that this lag in evidence development may be because interprofessional terms (e.g. teamwork, collaboration) remain conceptually unclear, with no common terminology or definitions, making it difficult to distinguish interventions from each other. In this paper, we examine published studies from the last decade in order to elicit current usage of terms related to interprofessional working; and, in so doing, undertake an initial empirical validation of an existing conceptual framework by mapping its four categories (teamwork, collaboration, coordination and networking) against the des...
Source: Journal of Interprofessional Care - Category: Health Management Tags: J Interprof Care Source Type: research