Organization’s Philosophy

An organization's philosophy guides policies, vision, mission, roles, responsibilities, goals and interpersonal relationships. Elements of an organization's philosophy can be spelled out in vision and mission statements, the leadership in the organization can greatly influence the collective philosophy and finally the day to day interactions of all of the people within the organization reflect organizational philosophy. The following descriptors were often associated with the organization's philosophy in this survey:

To some degree, individuals in all of the IPC settings interviewed made comments that implied it was their organizational philosophy to support preventative patient centred collaborative care and further they highly valued continuing education opportunities. Similar to the individual's "willingness to collaborate" it would appear that for the most part there is an organizational will to collaborate as well. One difference between organizations may be the extent to which other conditions within the organization allow this to happen. It would also appear that if IPC is to be promoted, organizations will want to leverage their organization's philosophy to make some of the implied philosophy more explicit, allocate resources with philosophic priorities in mind, and advocate for system wide changes to support their organization's philosophy.

While being patient centred and collaborative were obvious organizational philosophy themes, it was interesting to note that health promotion and valuing continuing education were also prominent discussion points with most of the focus groups. The partners in the Take Heart Coalition and the University IP educators from Schools of Kinesiology and Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism are not front-line care providers and they have a health promotion and health education mandate instead. Not surprisingly, these groups made the case that there should be organizational and system changes to nurture a wellness model instead of an illness model. Some of these related comments can be found in the "Wish list: possible recommendations" section, but as a start one could consider the definition of IPC. Note that the HealthForceOntario definition for IPC was shared with all participants and this definition itself generated some discussion. One educator had this to say:

The fact that IPE was seen as imbedded in IPC and in organizational philosophy and further, that educational opportunities appear to be embraced by health care workers bodes well for a health care transformation towards IPC. The following quote was not atypical:

Common Organizational Philosophy Themes

Patient Centred descriptors

Responsive to patient's needs
Caring
Flexible to the life experience of the patients
Empower clients

Prevention descriptors

Prefer "client" over "patient" (patients are ill)
Holistic
Prefer broad definition of health, to include lifestyle
Wellness model instead of illness model (proactive not reactive)
Preventive vs. reactive
Focus on children's health

Collaborative descriptors

Celebrate uniqueness and value of each profession
One team
We are all in this together
"Allied" as in "allied health professional" is a misnomer if all professions are equal

Value continuing education

Pro-academia

I would argue too that that word patient is very very limiting and it should say client, because often we are dealing with people that aren't in their best of health and are wanting to improve so "no" they are not healthy and we are just trying to keep them there, they are also not sick. They are wanting some assistance in improving what they are doing with themselves and their body and that is where some of the recreation, exercise and nutritional care (and it could be massage and some of the other professions) come into play there that will improve their health……..if I were to give feedback to HealthForceOntario, that would be something I'd say; make it broader, make it clients so you are encouraging people who feel they could be better in terms of how they look after themselves and their health..…. So I could put that in as a barrier. Terminology.

In our particular setting [a family health team], I don't know anyone who doesn't wear at least two hats [educator as well as care provider], so our setting is very pro-academia. We all host medical students, residents, social work students, and soon to be hosting nursing and Nurse Practitioner students. So yes, we are very much connected to the university and to the medical school. We are all in this organization very pro-learning and pro-offering opportunities. We are all on the same page with the importance of that.