Adopting Best Practices from Team Science in a Healthcare Improvement Research Network: The Impact on Dissemination and Implementation

Abstract

Healthcare is a complex adaptive system, and efforts to improve through the implementation of best practice are well served by various interacting disciplines within the system. As a transdisciplinary model is new to clinicians, an infrastructure that creates academic-practice partnerships and builds capacity for scientific collaboration is necessary to test, spread, and implement improvement strategies. This paper describes the adoption of best practices from the science of team science in a healthcare improvement research network and the impact on conducting a large-scale network study. Key components of the research network infrastructure were mapped to a team science framework and evaluated in terms of their effectiveness and impact on a national study of nursing operations. Results from this study revealed an effective integration of the team science principles which facilitated the rapid collection of a large dataset. Implications of this study support a collaborative model for improvement research and stress a need for future research and funding to further evaluate the impact on dissemination and implementation.