Enhancing interprofessional teamwork between youth care professionals using an electronic health record; a mixed methods intervention study

ABSTRACT

We aimed to investigate whether using a shared electronic patient record (EPR-Youth) strengthened interprofessional teamwork among professionals in youth care and child healthcare. Using a mixed-methods design, we compared two partly overlapping samples of professionals, who completed questionnaires before the introduction of EPR-Youth (n = 117) and 24 months thereafter (n = 127). Five components of interprofessional teamwork (interdependence, newly created professional activities, flexibility, collective ownership of goals, and reflection on processes) were assessed for this study. Midway through the study period, focus groups were held with 12 professionals to examine how EPR-Youth contributed to interprofessional teamwork. Professionals reported significantly more flexibility after the introduction of EPR-Youth than before. Professionals scored slightly -but not significantly- more positively on the other components of teamwork. Focus group participants reported that using EPR-Youth strengthened their sense of interdependence and collective ownership of goals, and contributed to newly created professional activities. At baseline, levels of interprofessional teamwork differed between organizations. Focus group participants confirmed these differences and attributed them to differences in facilitation of interprofessional teamwork. Our findings suggest that using EPR-Youth can foster interprofessional teamwork. Organizational differences underline that implementing an EPR alone is inadequate: shared definitions of teamwork and organizational facilities are needed to strengthen interprofessional teamwork.

KEYWORDS:

• Child health services
• collaboration
• electronic health records
• interprofessional teamwork

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank all professionals in the Centres for Youth and Family who participated in the study by completing a questionnaire or participating in a focus group. We further want to thank Klaudia Hoekstra, coach at the Centres for Youth and Family, for her role as focus group moderator; Claudia Laarman, master student, for her assistance with focus group transcripts and with a part of the qualitative analyses; and Gerrit Gort, statistic at Wageningen University, for providing his insights and expertise on the statistical analysis of the quantitative data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

JB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Visualization, Writing original draft and editing.

EdV: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.

AH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Validation, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.

All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are deposited in the DANS EASY repository, DOI 10.17026/dans-zxq-c63v. The following data are included: data professional questionnaire, both in Excel and SPSS, a data dictionary defining each field in the set, and the logbook. Since focus group transcripts contained sensitive information, these were not included. All included data will be available after an embargo period of one year. Until then, the datasets can be retrieved upon request from the corresponding author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2024.2314461

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ZonMw under grant nr 736300019. Before granting the funds, ZonMw reviewed the project proposal, and recommended some adaptations in the design. ZonMw played no role in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing this paper, nor in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Notes on contributors

Janine Benjamins

Janine Benjamins recently graduated as PhD at Wageningen University and works as a medical specialist in public health in the North Veluwe Centres for Youth and Family. Her research focuses on the use of interdisciplinary client-accessible health records as a tool to strengthen person-centred care.

Emely de Vet

Emely de Vet is dean at the University College of Tilburg and full professor at Tilburg University. Her expertise is in the field of behavior change for personal, public and planetary health. She is particularly interested in complex systemic health problems where many different actors and factors interact, such as climate-health nexus, protein transition, antibiotic resistance, obesity, health inequality.

Annemien Haveman-Nies

Annemien Haveman-Nies is an associate professor of the consumption and healthy lifestyles chairgroup at Wageningen University, and epidemiologist at the municipal healthcare organisation GGD Noord- en Oost Gelderland. Her double position enables her to work on the cutting edge of science, policy and practice. Her work is centered on the development, implementation and evaluation of (complex) public health interventions applied in a real-life setting.