A multimethod exploration of collaborative healthcare for osteoarthritis and its alignment to interprofessional educational strategies in South Africa
- Authors: Gilchrist-Park, Robynne Claire
- Date: 2025-04
- Subjects: Medicine -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Patient-centered health care , Interprofessional relations
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/74556 , vital:79755
- Description: Collaborative healthcare is fundamental to osteoarthritis management, yet healthcare systems in South Africa require significant improvements to support collaborative practice. This study explored patients’ and healthcare professionals’ experiences of collaborative osteoarthritis management and its alignment with interprofessional educational strategies in South Africa. Using a multimethod design, focus group discussions explored osteoarthritis patients’ experiences of collaborative healthcare; interviews captured healthcare professionals’ perspectives on interprofessional collaboration; and cross-sectional surveys assessed interprofessional education representatives’ viewpoints on strategies within health sciences faculties and final-year students’ attitudes towards interprofessional education. Findings underscored the importance of holistic, person-centered care in osteoarthritis management, where different healthcare professionals collaborate to meet patients’ healthcare goals. Patients and professionals emphasised that successful collaboration relies on effective communication, mutual respect, and receptiveness, which improves trust, shared decision-making, and healthcare quality. Barriers, such as role ambiguity, professional individualism, and poor communication, disrupted care continuity which left patients feeling disconnected. From an educational perspective, the implementation of interprofessional education across higher education institutions varied considerably. While interprofessional education is increasingly recognised as critical for preparing future healthcare professionals for collaboration, some faculties lacked dedicated interprofessional education units, placed insufficient emphasis on non-technical collaborative skills, and reported reduced exposure to interprofessional education during clinical training, particularly in disciplines like psychology and biokinetics. These findings revealed misalignment between collaborative needs and current interprofessional educational strategies. Aligning interprofessional educational strategies more closely with the demands of collaborative person-centred care will prepare future healthcare professionals to deliver high-quality, coordinated care for osteoarthritis patients in South Africa. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Behavioural & Lifestyle Sciences, 2025
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- Date Issued: 2025-04
A virtual-community-centric model for coordination in the South African public sector
- Authors: Thomas, Godwin Dogara Ayenajeh
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Electronic data processing -- Distributed processing , Interprofessional relations , Virtual work teams
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: vital:9831 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1021073
- Description: Organizations face challenges constantly owing to limited resources. As such, to take advantage of new opportunities and to mitigate possible risks they look for new ways to collaborate, by sharing knowledge and competencies. Coordination among partners is critical in order to achieve success. The segmented South African public sector is no different. Driven by the desire to ensure proper service delivery in this sector, various government bodies and service providers play different roles towards the attainment of common goals. This is easier said than done, given the complexity of the distributed nature of the environment. Heterogeneity, autonomy, and the increasing need to collaborate provoke the need to develop an integrative and dynamic coordination support service system in the SA public sector. Thus, the research looks to theories/concepts and existing coordination practices to ground the process of development. To inform the design of the proposed artefact the research employs an interdisciplinary approach championed by coordination theory to review coordination-related theories and concepts. The effort accounts for coordination constructs that characterize and transform the problem and solution spaces. Thus, requirements are explicit towards identifying coordination breakdowns and their resolution. Furthermore, how coordination in a distributed environment is supported in practice is considered from a socio-technical perspective in an effort to account holistically for coordination support. Examining existing solutions identified shortcomings that, if addressed, can help to improve the solutions for coordination, which are often rigidly and narrowly defined. The research argues that introducing a mediating technological artefact conceived from a virtual community and service lenses can serve as a solution to the problem. By adopting a design-science research paradigm, the research develops a model as a primary artefact to support coordination from a collaboration standpoint. The suggestions from theory and practice and the unique case requirement identified through a novel case analysis framework form the basis of the model design. The proposed model support operation calls for an architecture which employs a design pattern that divides a complex whole into smaller, simpler parts, with the aim of reducing the system complexity. Four fundamental functions of the supporting architecture are introduced and discussed as they would support the operation and activities of the proposed collaboration lifecycle model geared towards streamlining coordination in a distributed environment. As part of the model development knowledge contributions are made in several ways. Firstly, an analytical instrument is presented that can be used by an enterprise architect or business analyst to study the coordination status quo of a collaborative activity in a distributed environment. Secondly, a lifecycle model is presented as meta-process model with activities that are geared towards streamlining the coordination of dynamic collaborative activities or projects. Thirdly, an architecture that will enable the technical virtual community-centric, context-aware environment that hosts the process-based operations is offered. Finally, the validation tool that represents the applied contribution to the research that promises possible adaptation for similar circumstances is presented. The artefacts contribute towards a design theory in IS research for the development and improvement of coordination support services in a distributed environment such as the South African public sector.
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- Date Issued: 2014