Collaborative Care
Successful health care often relies on collaborative care, which requires a broad network of collaborative interactions among a variety of health service providers, patients, their families and caregivers, and the community, with patients being both the focal points and full-fledged partners of the overall effort.
Addressing the collaborative dynamics of health-care has long been recognized as a key aspect of primary health care renewal in Canada.
In addition to the work on Collaborative Care initiated by the Primary Health Care Transition Fund (PHCTF), which is outlined in the PHCTF Summary of Initiatives (PDF Version), two other initiatives of Health Canada have focused on two complementary aspects of Collaborative Care:
a) Collaboration between health care providers and patients was the focus of an initiative called the "Supporting Self Care project" (1995-2002). Following a study which documented how nurses and physicians can stimulate and support people's self-care efforts, several projects and workshops were funded by Health Canada. The objective was to stimulate awareness and action, so that health care professionals would be better equipped to assist their patients in their self-care efforts.
b) Training/education for collaborative care: more recently (2003) the notion of "Collaborative Patient-centered Practice" was the formulation identified by Health Canada as a key to promote active collaboration among several health care disciplines and professions in the process of providing health care. In continuity with the "Supporting Self Care" project, collaborative patient-centered practice enhances patient - family - and community centred goals and values, provides mechanisms for continuous communication among care givers, optimizes staff participation in clinical decision-making (within and across disciplines), and induces respect for the contributions of all disciplines including patients contributions to their own care. To promote a culture of collaborative patient-centered practice, the Health Human Resource Strategy has therefore chosen as one of its key initiatives the development and implementation of Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centered Practice (IECPCP).
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