Collaborative Healthcare: Understanding its Meanings from different Agents

Identifier:  TDX:3908

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3908

Authors:  Maghsoudi, Tahereh

Abstract:
This doctoral thesis focuses on the study of the concept of collaborative healthcare. The healthcare delivery system is a multi-stakeholder and multi-player system primarily aiming to provide services to promote, restore, and improve health indicators in communities. This highlights the importance of collaboration in the healthcare system. The general objective was to address the existing gaps in collaborative healthcare agents, practices, and meanings. The thesis was developed as a compendium of three publications, which are presented in three chapters. In the first article, an integrative literature review on the concept of collaborative healthcare was developed, in which the collaborative agents and practices contributing to the social sustainability of healthcare systems were discussed. The second empirical article investigated how collaborative healthcare meanings are being constructed in social media. The third empirical article explored the strategic discourses of hospitals as formal artifacts to construct meanings of collaboration in healthcare. The findings brought valuable conceptual, methodological, and practical contributions, and additionally, some suggestions for future studies are reflected.