Interprofessional Collaborative Communication in Acute Care Hospital Teams (SCRIPT)

February 6, 2009 updated by: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

The SCRIPT Programme (GIM): Structuring Communication Relationships for Interprofessional Teamwork to Achieve Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centered Practice (IECPCP)

Collaborative practice may improve patient outcomes in specific disease conditions and health care settings. The SCRIPT Programme is an intervention to implement informal, but structured, communication etiquette between members of interprofessional ward-based clinical teaching units (CTUs) in General Internal Medicine (GIM) hospital divisions.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

A recent literature review commissioned by Health Canada for the Inter-Professional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centred Practice initiative (IECPCP) reported evidence that collaborative practice improves patient outcomes in specific populations. Interprofessional collaborative teaching and practicing are poorly articulated in the literature, however. Studies are needed that can develop a trial-based body of evidence to support education and practice of effective interprofessional care.

The SCRIPT project will attempt to develop sustainable transformation in the conduct, learning and evaluation of interprofessional teamwork in the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN). SCRIPT has investigated interprofessional work relations in general internal medicine units at TAHSN hospitals using fieldwork observations and interview methods. These data were foundational for SCRIPT's design of a unit-based staff intervention intended to promote more--and more-effective--informal interprofessional communication and collaboration between GIM staff members outside of traditional, structured meeting times like morning report and bullet rounds.

The intervention is designed as part of a pragmatic trial. We will ask GIM division staff of intervention teams to implement a 4-step communication protocol in face-to-face, patient-related interaction. The steps are:

  1. introduce oneself by name;
  2. state one's role or responsibility in relation to the patient under discussion;
  3. describe the issue, problem, or plan relating to the target patient;
  4. elicit feedback from the other participant(s) in the interaction with a prompt, e.g., "do you have any concerns," or, "is there something else I should consider?"

The intervention will be evaluated as a cluster randomized controlled trial among five large Toronto (Canada) teaching hospitals. Two medical clinical teaching units and associated ward teams of nurses and other health professionals from each hospital's GIM division will be allocated at random to enact the intervention. Two other GIM CTUs in each hospital will continue their usual interprofessional practice, without intervention. In total, there are 20 CTUs, 10 in the treatment group and 10 in the control group. Intervention CTUs will be compared with control CTUs on the outcomes of interest.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

1000

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Canada
    • Ontario
      • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4N 3M5
        • Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
      • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1X5
        • Mount Sinai Hospital

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients admitted to divisions of General Internal Medicine
  • Health care providers working in divisions of General Internal Medicine

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
unplanned hospital readmission 7 days post-discharge and 30 days post-discharge

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
length of stay in hospital for GIM patients' index admission
measurement survey of staff members' perceptions of interprofessional collaboration
patient satisfaction measured by a large standardized, cross-site survey regime
calls placed to staff members' paging devices
use of evidence-based, optimal prescription drug therapy

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Collaborators

Health Canada

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Merrick Zwarenstein, MB BCh, MS, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

April 1, 2007

Study Completion (Actual)

December 1, 2008

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 25, 2007

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 25, 2007

First Posted (Estimate)

April 27, 2007

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

February 9, 2009

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 6, 2009

Last Verified

April 1, 2007

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • Health Canada 102117

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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