Leading innovation in transdisciplinary care

Martin Chadwick; Jennifer R. Hemler; Benjamin F. Crabtree

doi:10.1071/AH24089

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Leading innovation in transdisciplinary care

Martin Chadwick ^A ^* , Jennifer R. Hemler ^B and Benjamin F. Crabtree ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Ministry of Health, 133 Molesworth Street, Wellington, New Zealand.

^B Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.

^* Correspondence to: martin.chadwick@health.govt.nz

Australian Health Review 48(6) 682-687 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH24089

Submitted: 4 April 2024 Accepted: 20 September 2024 Published: 14 October 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

Benefits of effective team-based working in healthcare settings are well established, with the ultimate form being transdisciplinary teams. Achieving transdisciplinary teams at the large organisation or system level has not been extensively studied.

Purpose

To examine and describe exemplar organisations where transdisciplinary working was enabled and that can be reproduced in other organisations.

Methods

An expert panel reached consensus on three healthcare organisations in the USA that exemplified transdisciplinary working. Available public information about each organisation was reviewed and site visits with direct observation and interviews were conducted with two of the three exemplar sites (the third completed remotely due to the onset of COVID-19). The process of immersion-crystallisation was used to review the collated material and to identify key themes that were then repeatedly checked with the expert panel.

Results

Consistent themes were identified across all three organisations, although they each arrived at these commonalities via distinctly different routes. All had a clear and shared creation story as to how they came about as an entity, which was supported by consistent longitudinal leadership. This enabled an environment whereby each organisation created its own language that reflected their culture as an organisation, thus continually reinforcing the uniqueness of their organisation.

Conclusions

Large healthcare organisations can achieve the concepts of transdisciplinary practice. While no single achievement pathway was identified, common themes noted were a clear creation story, consistent leadership, and building a language that reflected the organisation.

Keywords: healthcare systems, healthcare workforce, organisational design, organisational culture, qualitative research, team culture, teamwork, transdisciplinary practice.

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