Cancer is a major disease increasing internationally pressure on all relevant health services (Aapro et al., 2017). The present and future health workforce provides health services for increasingly complex health issues and, in order to solve these challenges, a collaborative, interprofessional work is required. Collaboration is also an important factor for improving systems of health care (Walters et al., 2016). In Interprofessional teams, they need to understand how to optimize the skills of their members, share case management and work for the best of patients. Thus, it is important to develop interprofessional collaboration, and empowerment of professionals.
Cancer care is delivered by multiprofessional staff competent, motivated and committed with their work and collaboration. However, cancer and palliative care has been identified as a challenging work environment from the perspectives of occupational well-being and safety (Jones et al., 2013; Lagerlund et al., 2016). Interprofessional collaboration (Mercedes et al. 2016) and professional empowerment are associated with job satisfaction and the occupational well-being of staff (Zwarenstein et al., 2009; Laschinger, 2014 et al. 2014). Professional empowerment is also shown to be associated with commitment and intention to stay at work (Kuokkanen et al., 2016).
The aim of the research project is to: i) increase the understanding of interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and professional empowerment (PE) and their interrelated relationship in the context of cancer care; and ii) discuss how to promote IPC and PE in the future magnetic cancer centres. The purpose is to evaluate IPC and PE of the multiprofessional staff pre and post of an intervention targeting to enhance IPC and PE at the individual and unit level.
Method
Intervention study with pre-post design, in a network based cancer center in Western Finland. In first phase, an instrument (MONAMI) to evaluate IPC was developed based on literature review, analysis of existing instruments, work of expert group and delphi panel round. Professional empowerment is evaluated by previously tested instrument (Kuokkanen 2003). Both instruments were pilot tested, and baseline data collection (pre-intervention) is currently ongoing, targeting 1050 health care professionals in the cancer centre network. After baseline data collection,, two interventions will be implemented: one on individual and one on unit level during one year. After intervention, the post-intervention data will be collected from the same group.
Results
In the first phase, the instrument was created. Literature review and analysis of existing interprofessional collaboration instruments produced 25 instruments. After removing duplicates and excluding instruments focusing on individual teams, IPC between only one one or two professions and interprofessional education, 7 instruments were selected for further analysis. In these instruments, perspective of organization and leadership in support and promotion of IPC was narrow and for reaching the goal of this study, a new instrument was developed. The development phase included literature review, delphi panel (N=7) and pilot test with professionals including nurses and physicians (n=30). Before taking the new instrument in use, a pilot test in another multiprofessional cancer centre was showing the usability of the instrument. Instrument was developed in Finnish language. Swedish language, however, is the second national language in Finland, so we translated the instrument to Swedish with forward – back translation method before the actual data collection. In addition, CPAT Collaborative Practice Assessment Tool (Schroder et al. 2011 ) was used as a reference instrument. The baseline data collection began in May 2018 and will end in Sebtember 2018, and these results will be presented in the poster.
Discussion
In this study, we will first produce a new instrument for measuring interprofessional collaboration in cancer care, to be used in future studies and clinical practice. Secondly, we will test interventions for improving the collaboration. As a final goal, we can conclude about possible connections between interprofessional collaboration, professional empowerment of professionals and occupational well-being. The study will provide information for the present and future health care services how to develop collaborative and interprofessional work required for effective and high quality cancer care.