A multilevel study of patient-centered care perceptions in mental health teams

The successful combination of interprofessional collaboration in multidisciplinary teams with patient-centered care is necessary when it comes to delivering complex mental health services. Yet collaboration is challenging and patient-centered care is intricate to manage. This study examines correlates of patient-centered care such as team adaptivity and proactivity, collaboration, belief in interprofessional collaboration and informational role self-efficacy in multidisciplinary mental health teams.

A cross-sectional multilevel survey design was used, based on self-administered bilingual validated questionnaires. Participants (N=314) were mental health professionals and managers working in public primary care or specialized mental health services, in inpatient or outpatient settings.

This study showed that belief in interprofessional collaboration's relationship with patient-centered perceptions is increased in teams with high collaboration. Collaboration is also found as a mediator, representing a process by which team adaptive and proactive behaviors are transformed into positive patient-centered perceptions.

Our results were in line with recent studies on team processes establishing that collaboration is a key component in multilevel examinations of predictors of patient-centered care. In terms of practice, our study showed that multidisciplinary teams should know that working hard on collaboration is an answer to the complexity of patient-centered care. Collaboration is related to the teams' ability to respond to its challenges. It is also related to individuals' beliefs central to the delivery of interprofessional care.