Patient roles in primary care interprofessional teams: a constructivist grounded theory of patient and health care provider perspectives

ABSTRACT

Health care providers are increasingly asked to work in interprofessional teams to enhance the care provided to and health outcomes of their patients. However, there is little evidence on how to include patients in meaningful roles on these teams to support their health monitoring and management. The purpose of this study was to gain insight into roles that patients can assume within their health care teams and to understand the conditions and processes required for patient roles to be enacted. Ten patients and 10 health care providers from two Family Health Teams in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, participated in individual interviews to learn about their perspectives on patient roles in teams. Data collection and analysis strategies generated theoretical concepts, and member-checking interviews provided final feedback on the framework. This study resulted in a comprehensive framework of two roles and the conditions and processes required for patient-health care provider interactions within primary care interprofessional teams. Further researchers could use this framework to build knowledge of patient roles in interprofessional teams across varying health care settings and patient populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Constructivist grounded theory
• collaboration
• interprofessional teamwork
• patient-centered care
• patient participation
• patient roles

Acknowledgments

The first author would like to acknowledge the study participants.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kateryna Metersky

Dr. Kateryna Metersky, PhD, RN is a contract lecturer in the Master of Nursing programs at the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing at the University of Western Ontario and at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Ryerson University. She is also a contract lecturer with the Ontario Internationally Educated Nurses Course Consortium at Trent University. She continues to maintain her bedside nursing practice in General Internal Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. Her research focuses on patient self-care management and patient involvement in interprofessional patient-centered collaborative teams. She is currenting developing a measurement instrument entitled Patient Roles on Interprofessional Teams Scale (PRITS) looking at patient role enactment on teams.

Carole Orchard

Dr. Carole Orchard, EdD is currently Professor Emerita and Adjunct Research Professor in the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing and the former Coordinator of Interprofessional Health Education & Research at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on interprofessional client-centred collaborative practice. Dr. Orchard and her colleagues have developed several measurement instruments: Interprofessional Socialization & Valuing Scale (ISVS) and the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale-II (AITCS-II for practitioners), AITCS-II for students, and the Interprofessional Collaborative Leadership Scale (AICLS), A new measure the AITCS-II (students) is specifically for assessing collaboration in IP students during group learning. 

Tracey Adams

Dr. Tracey L. Adams, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. She specializes in the sociology of work, professions, and social inequality, with a particular interest in professional regulation, the changing nature of professional work, and interprofessional collaboration.

Christina Hurlock-Chorostecki

Dr. Christina (Tina) Hurlock-Chorostecki, PhD, NP is a limited duties professor at the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing at the University of Western Ontario. She worked as an NP since 2001 in critical care, transitional care, complex care, and renal care/hemodialysis.