A pan-Canadian study of registered dietitians’ perceptions and experiences of interprofessional collaboration

ABSTRACT

Little is known about Canadian dietitians’ perceptions and experiences of interprofessional collaboration. To address this knowledge gap, a cross-sectional online survey was administered to registered dietitians in Canada. Quantitative data was analyzed in SPSS using descriptive and inferential statistics, while thematic analysis was used for open-text responses. A total of N = 469 registered dietitians representing 10 provinces participated in the study. Results showed a significant difference (p < .001) between the frequency with which dietitians collaborated with other health and social care providers and their desired frequency, with 61.0% indicating they wanted more frequent collaboration. A majority of dietitians (59.2%) had negative views of interprofessional interactions. Nearly all respondents felt there is a need to raise better awareness about the dietetic profession (95.4%) and that dietitians are underutilized in the world of healthcare (92.5%). On three measures, a majority of participants (ranging from 65.6% to 81.5%) reported that their dietetic training helped equip them for interprofessional collaboration. Insufficient time/availability was the obstacle to interprofessional collaboration cited most frequently by dietitians. Results suggest that interprofessional collaboration is an area in need of attention in the Canadian dietetic profession, as well as with health and social care providers who work with dietitians. The study’s findings point to potential areas for improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Registered dietitians
• interprofessional collaboration
• interprofessional interactions
• interprofessional education
• obstacles

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Luke MacNeill, Kyle Rogers, Margaret Holland, individuals with the Centre for Research in Integrated Care, as well as the dietitians who were involved in consulting on the study’s design and piloting of the survey instrument.

Declaration of Interest Statement and Funding

The authors do not have any declarations.

Disclosure

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1. The term dietitian has been used as a shorthand for registered dietitian throughout.

2. Only the most prevalent themes have been reported for open-ended responses here and elsewhere. The full dataset is available on the Open Science Framework (Asher et al., 2020).

3. The respondent who selected more than one location (Alberta and Ontario) was removed from this table and in the analyses involving region in the remainder of the paper.

4. Sourced during data collection in March 2020 via personal correspondence with dietetic regulatory bodies in each province.

5. Here and below, “N/A,” “don’t know,” and “other” responses were removed.

6. These figures are for the last year for which data is available: 2018 in all cases except Saskatchewan, which is 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathryn E. Asher

Dr. Kathryn E. Asher is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Brunswick’s Centre for Research in Integrated Care where her primary field of specialization is the dietetic profession. She completed her PhD in Sociology as a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholar where her research was positioned at the intersection of dietary behavior change, the sociology of food, effective altruism, and social movement outcomes.

Shelley Doucet

Dr. Shelley Doucet is the Jarislowsky Chair in Interprofessional Patient-Centred Care, an Associate Professor in the Department of Nursing & Health Sciences at the University of New Brunswick Saint John and the director of its Centre for Research in Integrated Care. Her expertise lies in interprofessional patient-centred care, patient navigation, integrated care, and qualitative research.

Alison Luke

Dr. Alison Luke is the Research Associate for the Centre for Research in Integrated Care. She was previously the Crawford/Jarislowsky Post Doctoral Fellow in Health Policy and completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Waterloo. She specializes in the social determinants of health, access to healthcare, social inequality, sociology of health, and interpersonal relations.