Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Mar;21(3):239-49.
doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2011-000187. Epub 2011 Nov 30.

Health professional networks as a vector for improving healthcare quality and safety: a systematic review

Frances C Cunningham  1 , Geetha Ranmuthugala, Jennifer Plumb, Andrew Georgiou, Johanna I Westbrook, Jeffrey Braithwaite
Affiliations

Health professional networks as a vector for improving healthcare quality and safety: a systematic review

Frances C Cunningham et al. BMJ Qual Saf. 2012 Mar.

Abstract

Background: While there is a considerable corpus of theoretical and empirical literature on networks within and outside of the health sector, multiple research questions are yet to be answered.

Objective: To conduct a systematic review of studies of professionals' network structures, identifying factors associated with network effectiveness and sustainability, particularly in relation to quality of care and patient safety.

Methods: The authors searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Web of Science and Business Source Premier from January 1995 to December 2009.

Results: A majority of the 26 unique studies identified used social network analysis to examine structural relationships in networks: structural relationships within and between networks, health professionals and their social context, health collaboratives and partnerships, and knowledge sharing networks. Key aspects of networks explored were administrative and clinical exchanges, network performance, integration, stability and influences on the quality of healthcare. More recent studies show that cohesive and collaborative health professional networks can facilitate the coordination of care and contribute to improving quality and safety of care. Structural network vulnerabilities include cliques, professional and gender homophily, and over-reliance on central agencies or individuals.

Conclusions: Effective professional networks employ natural structural network features (eg, bridges, brokers, density, centrality, degrees of separation, social capital, trust) in producing collaboratively oriented healthcare. This requires efficient transmission of information and social and professional interaction within and across networks. For those using networks to improve care, recurring success factors are understanding your network's characteristics, attending to its functioning and investing time in facilitating its improvement. Despite this, there is no guarantee that time spent on networks will necessarily improve patient care.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of systematic review.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Heckscher C, Donnellon A. The Post-Bureaucratic Organisation: New Perspectives on Organizational Change. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1994
    1. Newman MEJ, Watts DJ, Strogatz SH. Random graph models. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002;99(Suppl 1):2566–72 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Freeman LC. The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science. Vancouver: Empirical Press, 2004
    1. Scott J. Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. 2nd edn Newbury Park: Sage, 2000
    1. Wasserman S, Faust K. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Publication types