(248) Does Teamwork Make the Dream Work? Evaluating Collaboration and Pharmacists’ Dual Identities on Interprofessional Teams

Objective : A dual-identity framework highlights the role of one’s personal professional identity and interprofessional identity in interprofessional teams. This study aimed to measure pharmacists’ interprofessional collaboration, characterize pharmacists’ personal professional and interprofessional identities, and investigate the relationship between interprofessional collaboration and dual identities.

Methods: Participants were recruited from diverse health-system types (ie, academic medical center, community, government). A sequential mixed methods design was used to investigate personal professional and interprofessional competencies representative of inpatient health-system pharmacists on interprofessional teams.

Results: Thirty-one pharmacists participated, with most representing academic medical center (n=16, 51.6%) or community (n=13, 41.9%) health-systems. Pharmacists expressed similar degrees of partnership (M=4.1, SD=0.6) and cooperation (M=4.1, SD=0.5) on their teams and lower amounts of coordination (M=3.7, SD=0.6). Academic medical center pharmacists (M=4.41, SD=0.42) reported significantly more (p < 0.01) partnership than their counterparts at community hospitals (M=3.78, SD=0.69). No differences were found regarding cooperation or coordination. Seven semi-structured interviews (n=5) and focus groups (n=2) were conducted with 11 participants representing all health-system types. Participants’ pharmacist professional identify centered on being the medication expert as well as specific behaviors (eg, approachable, available, anticipate team workflow/needs, problem-solve, willingness to go above and beyond). Participants struggled to articulate an interprofessional identity, with many expressing they were unable to separate their pharmacist identity and interprofessional identity. Participants described the value of their institutional knowledge as a unique strength valued by the interprofessional team.

Conclusions: This study provides insight into interprofessional collaboration and is one of the first to explore pharmacists’ professional and interprofessional identities on inpatient healthcare teams. Findings suggest health professions function better collaboratively rather than in siloes and begin to further define dual-identity outcomes representative of collaborative practice ready pharmacy graduates.