The supporting and inhibiting factors of interprofessional collaborative practice in a newly established teaching hospital

Abstract

Abstract The abilities of healthcare workers to collaborate effectively in the work environment are essential for improving healthcare services. Several factors are known to influence collaborative practice in hospitals. The present study aims to measure interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) and explore the factors associated with its implementation in a newly established teaching hospital in Indonesia. This study uses a mixed-method design and was conducted in the teaching hospital of Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS), involving 236 respondents in the quantitative phase (i.e. the administration of the Collaborative-Practice Assessment Tool [CPAT]) and 28 respondents in the focus-group discussions. The IPCP in the UNS teaching hospital is considered satisfactory (i.e. the respondents achieved 76.4–77.7% of the maximum score on the CPAT), with similar results across most domains of IPCP. This finding may be explained by the small power differentials among health professionals in the new hospital. The results also indicate that the importance of IPCP has been recognised in this hospital, with influencing factors such as interpersonal/interprofessional interactions and leadership and written guidelines on role distribution among the staff. This study suggests that it is critical to introduce an IPCP system to a hospital as early as possible, ideally when power differentials have not grown too large.