Zarina Lam
(Modified Guest Speech presented in the 13th Annual Nursing Conference: "Nurses, Always There For You", 2000)
Abstract
Collaboration between health professionals as a strategy to bring improved care outcomes has been proposed and discussed in modern health policy papers. This paper will discuss the vertical and horizontal modes of collaboration among health care professionals in the primary health care environment. Three studies conducted by the author would be included. The first study involved inter-organisational collaboration between health care and community sectors. 75 experienced hospital staff opined on how collaboration between the health and community sectors was currently supporting individuals in the community. The study result reflected an unbalanced mode of support for different client groups. The second study was to investigate if such difference could be improved if a new mode of integrated approach was to be adopted. This study examined the perception of multi-disciplinary staff on the new approach. The perceived importance of staff (N=141) on four areas of patient support were studied. These four areas were (a) comprehensive assessment, (b) informal support, (c) formal intervention and (d) cost and health monitoring. The findings of this study suggested that there was significant variations among health care professionals in their perceived importance of each area. The third study attempted to resolve the differences discussed by offering trans-disciplinary educational activities. The study measured the pre-and-post scores of the educational workshop. The outcome of the multi-disciplinary educational workshops for multi-disciplinary professionals (N=46) from different service settings supported that educational activities was effective to narrow the differences in collaborative efforts among health professionals. The paper proposed three levels of collaboration to be considered. The internal collaboration among same profession, for instance, nurses in primary and secondary health settings who shared similar value. The second level of collaboration is of trans-disciplinary nature. This level of collaboration can be facilitated through educational workshops that provided similar learning content. The third level of collaboration is trans-organisational collaboration that requires health and community service staff to work hand in hand in order to maximise health outcomes.
Key words: Collaboration, multi-disciplinary approach, primary health care