The effect of physical and team-focused implementation strategies on researcher attitudes toward clinician-researcher collaboration

Research Objectives: To evaluate changes in researchers’ attitudes regarding researcher-clinician collaboration after colocation of work environments and implementation of team-focused strategies.

Design: Prospective, longitudinal, observational study using an online survey at three time-points: (T1) 1-2 months pre-, (T2) 7-9 months post-, and (T3) 2.5 years post-intervention.

Setting: Urban inpatient rehabilitation facility.

Participants: Responders were ~150 clinical and non-clinical principal investigators (PIs) and other research staff.

Interventions: Physical move to a new hospital and team-focused strategies to promote clinician-researcher collaborations.

Main Outcome Measures: Adapted Organizational Change Recipients’ Beliefs Scale (OCRBS) measured acceptance of the organizational transition. Additional questions measured perceived benefits of working in proximity and perceived ability to communicate with clinicians. Ordinal logistic regression evaluated change over time and differences among research roles.

Results: Overall response rates were excellent (65%) across all surveys (T1=146; T2=157; T3=179). The number of other research staff increased by 27% from T1 to T3, while the number of clinical and non-clinical PIs remained stable. Clinical PIs were more accepting of organizational changes than non-clinical PIs (OCRBS F=5.34, p=0.005).

From T1 to T2, perceived benefits to researchers (OR: 0.49; 95%CI: 0.32, 0.75) and the organization (OR: 0.27, 95%CI: 0.2, 0.4) were less. However, perceived benefits to researchers increased from T1 to T3 (OR: 2.68; 95%CI: 1.8, 4.1). Clinical PIs initially perceived a greater benefit of the transition compared to non-clinical PIs (OR: 2.2; 95%CI 1.1-4.5). From T1 to T3, researchers reported greater eagerness to conduct research in a new area if a clinician identified it as important (OR: 2.4; 95%CI: 1.5, 3.8). Researchers perceived less effective communication with clinicians (OR 0.54 T3-T1; 95%CI: 0.34 – 0.88), without changes in frequency or ease of communication, or opportunity to learn from clinicians.

Conclusions: Researcher attitudes regarding collaboration were less positive 7-9 months after the move but rebounded two years later. Both clinical and non-clinical PIs report benefits to working in proximity with clinicians.

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors declare salary from the organization studied with no other relevant conflicts of interest.