Tracking, naming, specifying, and comparing implementation strategies for person-centred care in a real-world setting: a case study with seven embedded units

BACKGROUND: The implementation of person-centred care (PCC) is advocated worldwide. Stakeholders in charge of implementing PCC as a broad-scale change across the health care sector face two intertwined and complex challenges. First, making sense of PCC as an intervention with complex innovation characteristics and second, staging implementation of PCC by choosing appropriate implementation strategies. We aimed to explore one of these challenges by tracking, naming, specifying, and comparing which strategies and how strategies were enacted to support the implementation of more PCC in a real-world setting represented by one health care region in Sweden. METHODS: A case study with seven embedded units at two organisational levels within a health care region was conducted from 2016 to 2019. Data were collected from three sources: activity logs, interviews, and written documents. Strategies were identified from all sources and triangulated deductively by name, definition, and cluster in line with the taxonomy Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) and specified according to recommendations by Proctor and colleagues as actor, action, action target, temporality, dose, outcome, and justification. RESULTS: Four hundred thirteen activities were reported in logs, representing 43 discrete strategies identified in ERIC (n = 38), elsewhere (n = 1), or as emerging strategies (n = 4). The highest reported frequencies of discrete strategies were identified as belonging to two clusters: Train and educate stakeholders (40%) and Develop stakeholder interrelationships (38%). We identified a limited number of strategies belonging to the cluster Use evaluative and iterative strategies (4.6%) and an even smaller number of strategies targeting information to patients about the change initiative (0.8%). Most of the total dose of 11,076 person-hours in the 7 units was spent on strategies targeting health care professionals who provide PCC (81.5%) while the dose of strategies targeting support functions was 18.5%. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show both challenges and merits when strategies for implementation of PCC are conducted in a real-world setting. The results can be used to support and guide both scientists and practitioners in future implementation initiatives. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08846-x.