Understanding Interprofessional Teams in Mental Health Settings
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding Interprofessional Healthcare Teams in Mental Health Settings: An Ethnographic Study
IRAS ID
360392
Contact name
Natalie Sanford
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Good teamwork is essential for good patient care. Poor teamwork leads to negative consequences, including poorer patient care and lower satisfaction and wellbeing among healthcare professionals. Despite the importance of teamwork in healthcare, healthcare teams are often treated the same in research and practice. In reality, different teams have different structures, ways of working and challenges that impact how they work.
Understanding teamwork in mental healthcare is particularly difficult as mental healthcare is constantly changing. There are a number of unique characteristics of teamwork in mental health settings compared to hospital care. For example, mental health teams often work closely with other teams in other settings inside of healthcare, such as emergency care, and outside, such as schools. This presents an opportunity to explore if the structure of mental health teams, alongside ways of working and challenges, are similar or different to those in acute care.
To date, there has been little research that considers how team characteristics in mental health care impact teamwork, including how they come together (when, why, who) and work together. This research aims to explore team characteristics (e.g. who is in the team, how it's structured, and what they do) and contextual factors (e.g. where they work, what resources they have access to) that influence teamwork in different mental healthcare settings, in order to identify the best approaches to improve teamwork for different types of teams.
The research will involve observing different types of mental health teams across different clinical settings to explore how they work together and respond to challenges that come up in their day to day work. Once the key challenges and strengths are identified for different teams, focus groups will be used to explore potential ways to improve teamwork.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/LO/0293
Date of REC Opinion
14 May 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion