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Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study

BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illness typically receive ambulatory treatment from multiple health professionals. Connectedness between these professionals may influence their clinical decisions and the coordination of patient care. We aimed to describe and analyze connectedness in a regional net...

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Autores principales: Wensing, Michel, van der Eijk, Martijn, Koetsenruijter, Jan, Bloem, Bastiaan R, Munneke, Marten, Faber, Marjan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21722400
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-67
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author Wensing, Michel
van der Eijk, Martijn
Koetsenruijter, Jan
Bloem, Bastiaan R
Munneke, Marten
Faber, Marjan
author_facet Wensing, Michel
van der Eijk, Martijn
Koetsenruijter, Jan
Bloem, Bastiaan R
Munneke, Marten
Faber, Marjan
author_sort Wensing, Michel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illness typically receive ambulatory treatment from multiple health professionals. Connectedness between these professionals may influence their clinical decisions and the coordination of patient care. We aimed to describe and analyze connectedness in a regional network of health professionals involved in ambulatory treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS: Observational study with 104 health professionals who had joined a newly established network (ParkinsonNet) were asked to complete a pre-structured form to report on their professional contacts with others in the network. Using social networks methods, network measures were calculated for the total network and for the networks of individual health professionals. We planned to test differences between subgroups of health professionals regarding 12 network measures, using a random permutation method. RESULTS: Ninety-six health professionals (92%) provided data on 101 professionals. The reciprocity of reported connections was 0.42 in the network of professional contacts. Measures characterizing the individual networks showed a wide variation; e.g., density varied between 0 and 100% (mean value 28.4%). Health professionals with ≥10 PD patients had higher values on 7 out of 12 network measures compare to those with < 10 PD patients (size, number of connections, two step reach, indegree centrality, outdegree centrality, inreach centrality, betweenness centrality). Primary care professionals had lower values on 11 out of 12 network measures (all but reach efficiency) compared to professionals who were affiliated with a hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Our measure of professional connectedness proved to be feasible in a regional disease-specific network of health professionals. Network measures describing patterns in the professional contacts showed relevant variation across professionals. A higher caseload and an affiliation with a hospital were associated with stronger connectedness with other health professionals.
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spelling pubmed-31503212011-08-05 Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study Wensing, Michel van der Eijk, Martijn Koetsenruijter, Jan Bloem, Bastiaan R Munneke, Marten Faber, Marjan Implement Sci Research BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illness typically receive ambulatory treatment from multiple health professionals. Connectedness between these professionals may influence their clinical decisions and the coordination of patient care. We aimed to describe and analyze connectedness in a regional network of health professionals involved in ambulatory treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS: Observational study with 104 health professionals who had joined a newly established network (ParkinsonNet) were asked to complete a pre-structured form to report on their professional contacts with others in the network. Using social networks methods, network measures were calculated for the total network and for the networks of individual health professionals. We planned to test differences between subgroups of health professionals regarding 12 network measures, using a random permutation method. RESULTS: Ninety-six health professionals (92%) provided data on 101 professionals. The reciprocity of reported connections was 0.42 in the network of professional contacts. Measures characterizing the individual networks showed a wide variation; e.g., density varied between 0 and 100% (mean value 28.4%). Health professionals with ≥10 PD patients had higher values on 7 out of 12 network measures compare to those with < 10 PD patients (size, number of connections, two step reach, indegree centrality, outdegree centrality, inreach centrality, betweenness centrality). Primary care professionals had lower values on 11 out of 12 network measures (all but reach efficiency) compared to professionals who were affiliated with a hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Our measure of professional connectedness proved to be feasible in a regional disease-specific network of health professionals. Network measures describing patterns in the professional contacts showed relevant variation across professionals. A higher caseload and an affiliation with a hospital were associated with stronger connectedness with other health professionals. BioMed Central 2011-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3150321/ /pubmed/21722400 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-67 Text en Copyright ©2011 Wensing et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Wensing, Michel
van der Eijk, Martijn
Koetsenruijter, Jan
Bloem, Bastiaan R
Munneke, Marten
Faber, Marjan
Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title_full Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title_fullStr Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title_full_unstemmed Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title_short Connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease: a social networks study
title_sort connectedness of healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of patients with parkinson's disease: a social networks study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21722400
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-67
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