Collaborative learning processes in the context of a public health professional development program: a case study

ABSTRACT

The health promotion laboratory (HPL – Canada) is a public health professional development program building on a collaborative learning approach in order to support long-term practice change in local health services teams. This study aims to analyse the collaborative learning processes of two teams involved in the program during the first year of implementation. Based on a multiple case study design involving observations, interviews, and documentary sources, the study: (1) describes the learning process by which each team built a common understanding of the problem at hand and developed an intervention to address it; (2) identifies factors that facilitated or hindered these processes; and (3) proposes a cross-case explanation of the collaborative learning process in the HPL. The results demonstrate that the two teams learned by expanding their repertoire of actions, albeit experiencing different processes. Results point to the central role of shared mental models and key influencing factors, such as commitment and participation (team cohesion), team climate (psychological safety), and leadership style. Unlike previous studies on team learning that concentrated on existing teams in organisations, the current research studied purposely created teams working at transforming their practices and showed that they can successfully learn if specific conditions are achieved.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional development
• program evaluation
• team learning
• public health

Disclosure statement

The authors of this work declare no competing financial interests.

Notes on contributors

Marie-Claude Tremblay Ph.D., is an Assistant professor in health sciences education at the Department of Family Medicine and Emergency medicine of Université Laval. Her research interests include professional development in health sciences, educational theories and participatory approaches to program evaluation and research.

Lucie Richard Ph.D., is a tenured Full Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at Université de Montréal. She is currently director of the Institut de Recherche en Santé Publique de l’Université de Montréal (IRSPUM).

Astrid Brousselle Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the department of Community Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, and researcher at the Charles-LeMoyne Hospital Research Center. She is the holder of a Canada Research Chair in ‘Evaluation and Health System Improvement (EASY)’ co-funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de recherche en Santé du Québec.

François Chiocchio Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa. His research interests include project management, teamwork and collaboration, individual and team coaching.

Nicole Beaudet M.Sc., is a project manager for the Health Promotion Laboratory at the Public Health Directorate for Montréal. She is also a clinical professor at the Department of Preventive Medicine of Université de Montréal.

Notes

1. In French: Centres de santé et de services sociaux.

2. The intervention theory (logic model) of the HPL has been evaluated in a previous study for its potential to lead to the expected outcomes. The analysis demonstrated that the program's model has great potential to achieve its intended results (reference hidden for peer review).

Additional information

Funding

Marie-Claude Tremblay’s doctoral work, from which this study comes, was funded by the Strategic Training Program in Transdisciplinary Research on Public Health Interventions: Promotion, Prevention and Public Policy (4P), a partnership of the Institute of Population and Public Health and the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Québec Population Health Research Network. Lucie Richard acknowledges the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé (FRSQ), which funded her National Scholar Award [16207]. Astrid Brousselle acknowledges the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé (FRSQ) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which fund her Canada Research Chair in Evaluation and Health System Improvement.