Improving interdisciplinary collaboration of health care professionals on inpatient medical ward - action research

At a time when interdisciplinary collaboration of health care professionals is reaching new levels of interest, questions about new approaches of its implementation in the set up health settings are being raised: What does interprofessional team mean in todays health care? Who are the members of the modern interdisciplinary team and what are the roles of the professionals in the team? What are the reasons for implementation of interdisciplinary collaboration? And what are the benefits to the particular department? The aim of the thesis is to summarise the knowledge on interprofessional collaboration of health care professionals (excluding doctors) and describe mechanisms which influence desirable cooperation among these professionals in a specific workplace. In the text, the process of development of interdisciplinary collaboration in a medical in-patient department is described. Activities performed to improve the collaboration among the health care staff are discussed. Those interventions, which had an impact on the particular characteristic of interprofessional collaboration that was studied, are analysed. Participation in the project of all health care professionals from the ward was one of the major characteristics of the research approach, known as action research