• Project Profiles
  • NICU Feeding Practices
  • Approaches to Public Health Nursing
  • HKN Gap Analysis
  • Evidence Literacy Project
  • Assessing Patient Complexity
  • Early Identification of Autism
  • Measuring Quality Care
  • Young Adults in Long-Term Care
  • Reducing Medication Errors
  • Making Exercise Sticky
  • Stroke Guidelines
  • Driving Change in Mental Health
  • Help for New Mothers
  • Mentoring Makes a Difference
  • Pay-for-Performance
  • Good Care is About People
  • Working Better Together
  • Health Technology Assessment
  • Looking at the Link between Pain and Aggression
  • Reviewing Determinants of Health
  • End of Life Care Decisions in Focus
  • Rural Health Service Delivery
  • Looking at Organizational Problems
  • Integrating Evaluation with Planning
  • Rural Health Needs
  • Suicide Prevention
  • Student Health
  • Hepatitis A Immunity Project
• Participant Profiles
• Knowledge Infostructure
• Celebrating the Legacy

Working Better Together

"Let's collaborate." Working together always sounds good, so why does it often not meet expectations? This question has often occurred to Brad Jones, Rehabilitation Manager for Alberta Health Services in Vegreville. His SEARCH VI local project allowed him to explore the topic more fully. "We had been challenged with collaboration and communication issues. SEARCH was an opportunity to find out more about the determinants of effective communication and collaboration as they relate to healthcare organizations."

Jones' review of the literature identified many determinants; he then filtered them down to six: 

• Shared/adequate resources, including time, human resources and sustainable finances
• Good communication and an infrastructure for good communication, including information technology
• Trust, understanding, respect, and a positive working climate between partners
• Skilled, strong leadership
• Clear, realistic, concrete, and attainable goals and objectives
• Absence of constant reorganization and/or adaptability and ability of the organizations to manage change

"Although the factors are important, I think my key finding is that organizations need to make it clear at the outset which way of working together will work best for what they want to do," says Jones. "Being deliberate will improve the chance of success." He notes that collaboration is only one way organizations can work together. Other ways - communication, contribution, coordination or cooperation - may yield the intended results with different requirements for resources, level of integration and other considerations related to working together.

Jones says he is impressed by the level of interest in his project. He has been asked to speak on his research to senior leadership and has been in contact with Covenant Health about his results. "My gut feeling is that in health care we get so caught up in doing things that we don't take time to reflect. My research results serve as a reminder to do that."