Collaboration processes, outcomes, challenges and enablers of distributed clinical communities of practice

Modern healthcare's need for knowledge sharing and bridging the research–practice gap requires new forms of collaboration, in which clinicians of varying clinical and research expertise work together over geographical and organisational borders. To support such distributed communities of practice (CoPs), an understanding of their collaboration processes, outcomes, challenges and enablers is needed. The article examines these issues through a case study of a long-running CoP, the Swedish Oral Medicine Network (SOMNet). SOMNet's main form of collaboration is monthly telephone conference meetings centred on case consultations. Cases are submitted by the clinicians via a Web-based system. The methods used were interviews, observations, and a questionnaire. The work adds to previous research by studying a distributed CoP explicitly focused on supporting the transfer of scientific results from researchers to practitioners. We found that the regular meetings give a rhythm to the community. The centrality of cases means an immediate benefit for the submitter while the community is provided an authentic context for learning. SOMNet yields opportunities for help and learning for diverse expertise levels; the type of benefits is affected by the participant's degree of oral medicine knowledge and collaboration involvement. There are challenges in accommodating varying levels of expertise and encouraging those less experienced to participate. Enablers of the collaboration include the participation of experts, meeting facilitators and well-adapted ITs.

Keywords:

• communities of practice
• clinical collaboration
• knowledge translation
• medical team meetings
• medical informatics
• dental informatics

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Mats Jontell and Dr. Olof Torgersson, who were deeply involved in the conception, design, development and continued use of the SOMWeb system. We also thank all the users of SOMWeb and system administrator Marita Nilsson. This work was funded by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA), research grants 2003-010408 and 2006-02792.

Notes

Oral medicine concerns diseases related to the oral and paraoral structures. This includes the principles of medicine related to the mouth, as well as diseases specific to the orofacial tissues and oral manifestations of systemic diseases.

http://www.soms.se/

To give an indication of its use since, in May 2011, SOMWeb had 300 registered users at 200 clinics, had been used at 45 meetings and contains 224 cases.