Staff perceptions implementing interprofessional team-based behavioural healthcare

ABSTRACTThe US Veterans Health Administration(VHA) in 2013 mandated a nationwide implementation of interprofessional team-based care in the general mental health setting and officially endorsed the collaborative caremodel in 2015 to guide the coordinated and anticipatory care to be delivered by these teams. Front-lineclinic staff are major stakeholders whose practices are most directly affected by this implementation and may or may not view teams as useful or feasible for their practice. Our objective was to examine their perspectives on delivering team-to-patient care in order to understand what system-level efforts can best support the transition to such care from the more conventional provider-to-patient care. We conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with staff from general mental health clinics across three different VHA medical facilities. The interview questions focused on asking how care is organised and delivered at their clinic, their experiences in collaborating with other staff, and how th...