There is a clear international policy commitment to placing interdisciplinary team-working at the centre of health and social care integration across the life span. The aim of the National Clinical Programme for Older People (NICPOP) in Ireland is to shift the delivery of care away from acute hospitals towards community-based, planned and coordinated care. This care will be delivered by interdisciplinary Integrated Care Teams (ICTs). This interdisciplinary team-based approach to care integration will require a shift in cultures of care to allow for the development of competencies for interprofessional collaboration.
This study builds upon a previous collaborative partnership project which co-designed a framework describing core competencies for interprofessional collaboration in ICTs for older people. We propose a realist-informed process evaluation of the framework to be undertaken as the competencies it describes are being fostered in newly developed ICTs under the national scale-up of the NICPOP.
Realist evaluation approaches reveal what worked, why it worked (or didn’t), for whom and under what circumstances. Three iterative and integrated work packages are proposed which combine multiple methods of data collection, analysis and synthesis. Prospective data collection will be undertaken within four integrated care teams. This will include qualitative exploration of the care experiences of older people and family carers. The realist explanatory theory resulting from this study will provide an understanding of how interprofessional collaboration can be fostered and sustained in various contexts of integrated care for older people. It will also underpin curriculum development for team-based education and training of health care professionals; a key priority area in the national health strategy. It will provide healthcare leaders with knowledge of the resources and supports required to harness the benefits of interprofessional collaboration and to realise the goals of integrated care for older people.
