Perceptions and experiences of primary healthcare providers toward interprofessional collaboration in chronic disease management in Hue, Vietnam

ABSTRACT

In Vietnam, each primary care community health center (CHC) consists of a multi-professional team with six disciplines, including a physician, assistant physician, nurse, pharmacist, midwife, and Vietnamese traditional physician, who are able to meet the majority of patient’s needs at the primary care level. How they collaborate, especially in chronic disease management (CDM), is still limited described in the literature. This study aims to gain insight into the perceptions and the experiences of primary health care providers (PHCPs) toward interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in CDM in CHCs in (Hue) Vietnam. A qualitative study of descriptive phenomenology was performed using two focus groups and 15 semi-structured interviews with PHCPs from six professions relevant to CDM in CHCs. The data were analyzed using NVivo 12.0 with a thematic analysis method by a multiprofessional research team. From the analysis, the data were classified into three main themes: “lack of collaborative practice,” “knowledge,” and “facilitators and barriers to IPC.” This study provided evidence of the awareness that actual collaboration in daily care is fragmentarily organized and that PHCPs try to finish their tasks within their profession. PHCPs work multiprofessionally and lack shared decision-making in patient-centered care. There is a need to develop an interprofessional education program and training to address these deficiencies in the Vietnamese context to improve interprofessional collaboration in health care.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronic disease
• Collaboration
• Interprofessional collaboration
• Primary healthcare
• Qualitative descriptive research

Acknowledgments

The research team would like to thank the sharing experiences of the participants.

Disclosure statement

There was no reported potential conflict of interest by the research team.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2023.2227650

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VLIR Inter-University Cooperation Program VLIR-IUC with Hue University

Notes on contributors

Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen

Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen is a lecturer and a medical doctor at the Department of Family Medicine, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University, Hue, Vietnam. She is working on a PhD at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Giannoula Tsakitzidis

Giannoula Tsakitzidis is a professor at the Department of Primary and Interdisciplinary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium.

Nguyen Minh Tam

Nguyen Minh Tam is an associate professor of public health and a vice-rector of Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University. He is a director of the Family Medicine Center at Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University, Hue, Vietnam.

Martin Valcke

Martin Valcke is a professor of the Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium.

Huynh Van Chuong

Huynh Van Chuong is an associate professor and a director of the Education Quality Management Agency atthe Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam.

Johan Wens

Johan Wens is a professor at the Department of Primary and Interdisciplinary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium.