Abstract
Communities of practice (CoP) can facilitate collaboration between people who share a common interest, but do not usually work together. A CoP was initiated and developed including stakeholders from clinical, research, community and governmental backgrounds involved in a large multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial project: the Rehabilitation Living Lab in a Mall (RehabMaLL). This study aimed to evaluate the structure, process and outcomes of this CoP. A single case-study, using mixed-methods, evaluated the RehabMaLL CoP initiative after one year, based on Donabedian’s conceptual evaluation model. Forty-three participants took part in the RehabMaLL CoP with 60.5% (n = 26) participating at least once on the online platform where 234 comments were posted. Four in-person meetings were held. Members expressed satisfaction regarding the opportunity to share knowledge with people from diverse backgrounds and the usefulness of the CoP for the RehabMaLL project. Collaboration led to concrete outcomes, such as a sensitization activity and a research project. Common challenges included lack of time and difficulty finding common objectives. A CoP can be a useful strategy to facilitate knowledge sharing on disability issues. Future research is necessary to determine strategies of increasing knowledge creation between members.
Highlights
Researchers in the field of rehabilitation are increasingly interested in finding mechanisms to ensure their research is relevant and applicable for front-line health care professionals and community partners, with the ultimate goal of increasing social participation of people with disabilities.Models describing the complex process of bringing different types of knowledge into action, such as the Knowledge-To-Action (KTA) model [1], highlight the necessity to include stakeholders early in the research process in order to develop projects relevant to their needs and realities [2]
A Communities of practice (CoP) was initiated in May 2013 to facilitate mutual sharing of ideas and experiences between stakeholders from research, clinical, community and governmental milieus involved in the Rehabilitation Living Lab in the Mall (RehabMaLL; www.crir-livinglabvivant.com), a large multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial research project initiated by the Centre for Interdisciplinary
The 40 items addressed in the questionnaire are derived from a comprehensive search of possible factors that can impact on the success of a CoP. They are divided : results (e.g., “I think the overall objectives of the CoP have been achieved”), learning experiences (e.g., “In the CoP, I learned a great deal on a personal level”), value of the initiative (e.g., “The CoP is very useful for the organization that sponsored it”), vitality of exchanges (e.g., “Members ask questions in order to gain a better understanding”), relationships between members (e.g., “There is a strong sense of belonging to the CoP”), obstacles to collaboration (e.g., “My participation in the CoP meetings requires too much time”), outcomes (e.g., “The CoP allows for an exchange of information with people working in the same field as I do”) and member satisfaction (e.g., “I am very satisfied with my participation in the CoP”)
Summary
Models describing the complex process of bringing different types of knowledge into action, such as the Knowledge-To-Action (KTA) model [1], highlight the necessity to include stakeholders early in the research process in order to develop projects relevant to their needs and realities [2] This model implicitly presents knowledge transfer and knowledge application as a two-way process, taking into account both knowledge empirically derived (research) as well as other experiential or tacit knowledge such as that gained from clinical practice or personal experiences. Despite this growing interest in including relevant stakeholders in the KTA process, difficulties in involving them in research remain. The premise is that by bringing together individuals from research and clinical domains early in the process, these groups will better understand each other, making research findings more useable for the clinicians [10,13]
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