Adoption of Best Practices in Team Science within a Healthcare Improvement Research Network

Puga, Frank

Purpose: The nature of research in the field of improvement science calls for the use of interprofessional scientific teams in order to generate effective strategies aimed at improving healthcare delivery and patient safety. This transdisciplinary model is new to healthcare. Until recently there have been few efforts to integrate health disciplines for research and establish an effective infrastructure to support transdisciplinary collaboration in improvement science. The aim of this project was to evaluate the adoption of best practices in Team Science in an improvement research network

Methodology: Best practices from team science were adopted and integrated into the structure and processes of the Improvement Science Research Network including readiness for collaboration, creating a shared mental model, management and planning of collaborative work, and building long distance, virtual teams. These practices were reflected through the ISRN’s Coordinating Center support, its national research agenda, and the technology infrastructure supporting virtual research collaboratives.

Results: Readiness for collaboration was demonstrated through 70% compliance to study timelines and less than 1% reported ambiguity on the study objectives and role of each individual in the collaborative. Qualitative data revealed that the ISRN’s research priorities were useful in shaping a shared mental model that promoted efficient conduct of the network study across multiple sites. Effective management and planning was demonstrated through an average 95% attendance by study sites on biweekly conference calls and reports of less than six protocol deviations by each site. Finally, evaluation of the ISRN’s technical infrastructure and “virtualness” revealed successful factors for collaboration.

Conclusions: The ISRN is pioneering the integration of best practices from Team Science in Improvement Science research through the infrastructure used to support the virtual Research Collaboratives. Indications are that the work of the Research Collaborative was positively assisted by the guidance gleaned from the Science of Team Science.