The Collaboration Compass: A Preliminary Model for Navigating Collaborative Practice

PURPOSE: To investigate the meaning and manifestation of collaboration in practice including the experience and outcomes for patients and professionals. METHODS: Grounded theory was used to investigate collaboration in an integrated outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) service. The sample consisted of staff and patients with experience of OPAT. Interviews and focus groups were used to generate data, and grounded theory methods were used to progress the study through constant comparative analysis and theoretical sampling to data saturation. Coding, categorizing, and techniques of situational analysis were used to analyze data and develop theory. RESULTS: The relationship between the influences in the situation and the interaction which takes place between individuals was found to produce four different types of collaboration: developing, maintaining, limiting, and disrupting collaboration. The collaboration compass model was developed to illustrate and aid interactive navigation of collaborative situations. DISCUSSION: The findings present the complexity of practice, and a model to explain the multiple influences and interaction which shape collaboration. In this model, patients are part of collaboration, and this ensures that patients’ views and experiences, as well as those of professionals, are included and represented in knowledge about collaboration. This adds a new dimension to existing interprofessional presentations of collaborative practice and examines collaboration as it is operationalized in practice and co-constructed between patients and professionals during day to day practice.