Development of a scale for measuring collaboration between physicians and nurses in primary health-care teams

ABSTRACT

During past decades the science of collaboration in health care has progressed significantly worldwide, although in some regions (e.g.: Central and Eastern Europe) these processes are slower. The aim of this study was to develop a new, multidimensional measurement tool of the developing collaboration in primary health care (PHC). This study included both qualitative (thematic analysis of the data from focus group discussions) and quantitative (a 36-item cross-sectional questionnaire) methods in order to develop and test a new measurement scale. The collaboration scale between community nurses (CNs) and general practitioners (GPs) in primary health-care teams (COPAN scale) was created. It initially revealed five determining factors: “Goal Oriented Team Synergy”, “Team Structure and Leadership”, “Organizational Background for Teamwork”, “Competence” and “Diffusion of Functions.” Two and three-factor scales (COPAN-2 and COPAN-3) were developed after confirmatory factor analysis with sufficient psychometric characteristics to be applied in practice. This study reports the reliability of a novel tool that can be used to measure collaboration of CNs and GPs in PHC. The newly developed scale has the potential to become an easy-to-use tool in the monitoring of teamwork situations within PHC settings of low integration or newly evolving teams.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• primary health care
• general practitioners
• nurses

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all general practitioners and community nurses who kindly spared their time to take part in this study.

Competing interests

None declared.

Ethics approval

The Bioethics Committee of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences In 2012 provided approval for the ethical aspects of this study.

Additional information

Funding

This document is an output from the project “Intersectoral collaboration in solving health care problems in social risk families” (SIN-13/2012), funded by the Research Council of Lithuania.