Research projects

Team Care for the Care Team

Project led by Kirstie McAllum (Université de Montréal)

Stephanie Fox (Université de Montréal), Darla Fortune (Université Concordia), Mélanie Couture (CIUSSS Centre-Ouest de Montréal) et Sandra Smele (collaboratrice du CREGÉS).

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number435-2020-1274).

Many healthcare workers are in distress, suffering from an over-stretched healthcare system whose frailties have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Their distress can be alleviated by what we propose to call “team care for the care team,” or the relational and compassionate dimensions of teamwork and collaboration in healthcare contexts. This engaged qualitative research project investigates what communication practices and processes are involved in team care, examining in particular the context of long-term residential care facilities for older adults in the Montreal region. In particular, the project considers how team care can be supported by organizational and leadership supports, and how it complements other forms of organizational compassion.

Nurse practitioner communication challenges

Bothering as part of professional practice: Nurse practitioners and interprofessionalcollaboration in primary care

Project led by Stephanie Fox (Université de Montréal)

Mylaine Breton (Université Sherbrooke), Kelly Kilpatrick (Université McGill), Arnaud Duhoux (Université de Montréal), Isabelle Levasseur (Cité de la santé de Laval), Marie-Thérèse Lussier (Université de Montréal), Isabelle Gaboury (Université de Sherbrooke), Brigitte Vachon (Université de Montréal) et Maria Cherba (Université d'Ottawa).

Funded by Réseau-1 Québec and RRISIQ.

Over the past two decades, primary health care organizations in Western nations increasingly rely on the participation of nurse practitioners (NPs) in interprofessional (IP) team-based care. Typically, NPs can provide patient care that includes follow up and monitoring of minor acute conditions and chronic illness. NPs are integrated into primary care to improve organizational efficiency and quality of care by improving patient access while controlling and compensating for physician shortages. However, their integration has proven difficult in many jurisdictions. In Quebec, the growing number of NPs in the province’s family medicine clinics (GMFs) face unique challenges that this context poses to effective interprofessional team communication . For instance, while their provincial practice guidelines allow them to practice autonomously, NPs must be supervised by physician-partners who themselves face significant pressure to maintain patient flow. This can lead to strained communication dynamics where NPs feel that they must always “bother” their physician-partners. This research project therefore investigates the experiences of NPs and their interprofessional teams with such communication challenges, as well as their strategies for overcoming them. In particular, it aims to identify how institutional arrangements complicate or facilitate communication and interprofessional collaboration in these contexts.

On-road, off-road relationships

On-road/off-road relationships: How ambulance crews negotiate volunteer and paid staff roles

Project led by Kirstie McAllum (Université de Montréal).

Funded by St John Ambulance New Zealand (grant number RM No. 6, 2016) and the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number RNH00291).

How do paid and volunteer ambulance officers who work alongside each other to provide emergency services negotiate their respective roles in workplace conversations? This project seeks to examine interactions in detail, to see how task-related role negotiations (how ambulance crews talk about who should do which tasks – and who actually does the work) are informed by and inform the relationship between paid staff and volunteers. A naturalistic ethnographic approach enables us to consider the dynamic nature of these relationships and how they are constructed, framed, contested, and re-scripted by both parties in organizational spaces (stations) and in public places (patient homes, roadsides, workplaces and sports grounds, for example).

Caring heroes or workplace zeroes

Caring heroes or workplace zeroes? Negotiating the role of paid home-based care workers within care teams

Project led by Kirstie McAllum (Université de Montréal).

Funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (grant number 2017-NP-198942).

Home-based care work that enables older Canadians to "age in place" has been promoted as a form of care that improves their quality of life. Yet, the sector as a whole has high turnover rates due to low wages, long hours of work, and challenging working conditions. Research has indicated that paid care workers who are well integrated into care teams report high levels of job satisfaction. This project seeks to make a valuable contribution to understanding how paid care workers who care for older persons in their clients’ homes negotiate their role within multi-person home-based care teams and more specifically the way that roles are assigned to care workers. This project aims to follow care workers in six different home care settings to see how they negotiate their role within workplace interactions. Specifically, it asks how members of the care team talk about who should do which material and social tasks and documents who actually performs these tasks. It also considers how care workers, care recipients, recipients’ family members, and representatives of the organization that employs them value/devalue the work of caring through and in conversation. Analysis of these micro-level interactions will allow us to probe the problematic relationship between care work and workplace dignity, which underpins the occupational prestige that we accord to those who carry it out. The results of the research would have practical application in the development of public policy related to care work and the retention of the home care workforce at agency/organizational levels.

Caregiver Socialization

To come.

Interprofessional Education

Project led by Stephanie Fox (Université de Montréal).

This project aims to understand how students in the health professions learn to be interprofessional communicators.

Integrating EDI into AI

Integrating Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion into the lifecycle of Artificial Intelligencetechnologies in primary healthcare

Project co-led by Pascale Caidor (Université de Montréal).

Funded by RSBO (Réseau de recherche en santé buccodentaire et osseuse).

Despite the potential benefits of AI technologies, studies show that the deployment of AI technologies in primary healthcare, like in other fields, can exacerbate bias against certain population segments who are often already marginalized in the real world. Healthcare researchers and professionals continue to explore ways to address the primary healthcare needs of diverse populations to achieve health equity for all populations.

Public relations and non-profits serving Black communities

The social role of public relations in nonprofit organizations serving Black communities

Project led by Pascale Caidor (Université de Montréal).

The overall objective of this research is to study the PR practices of a set of organizations fighting inequalities based on race or ethnicity, thus allowing the perspectives, discourses and arguments of this collective to emerge from a perspective of dialogue with their audiences.