A.W. Dow is assistant vice president of health sciences for interprofessional education and collaborative care and professor of medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, Virginia; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9004-7528. D.K. Sewell is assistant professor of biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9238-4026. K.S. Lockeman is assistant professor of medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, Virginia; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1890-3710. E.A. Micalizzi is center administrator, Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Care, Richmond, Virginia.
Acad Med. 2020 Feb;95(2):207-212. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003010.
Centers and institutes are created to support interdisciplinary collaboration. However, all centers and institutes face the challenge of how best to evaluate their impact since traditional counts of productivity may not fully capture the interdisciplinary nature of this work. The authors applied techniques from social network analysis (SNA) to evaluate the impact of a center for interprofessional education (IPE), a growing area for centers because of the global emphasis on IPE.The authors created networks based on the connections between faculty involved in programs supported by an IPE center at Virginia Commonwealth University from 2014 to 2017. They used mathematical techniques to describe these networks and the change in the networks over time. The results of these analyses demonstrated that, while the number of programs and involved faculty grew, the faculty maintained a similar amount of connection between members. Additional faculty clusters emerged, and certain key faculty were important connectors between clusters. The analysis also confirmed the interprofessional nature of faculty collaboration within the network.SNA added important evaluation data beyond typical metrics such as counts of learners or faculty. This approach demonstrated how a center was evolving and what strategies might be needed to support further growth. With further development of benchmarks, SNA could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of centers and institutes relative to each other. SNA should guide strategic decisions about the future of centers and institutes as they strive to meet their overarching goal of tackling a social challenge through interdisciplinary collaboration.
中心和研究所的成立旨在支持跨学科合作。然而，所有的中心和研究所都面临着如何最好地评估其影响的挑战，因为传统的生产力计数可能无法完全捕捉到这项工作的跨学科性质。作者应用了社会网络分析（SNA）的技术来评估一个跨专业教育（IPE）中心的影响，由于全球对 IPE 的重视，IPE 中心的数量不断增加。作者根据弗吉尼亚联邦大学 IPE 中心支持的项目中教师之间的联系创建了网络，这些网络的创建时间为 2014 年至 2017 年。他们使用数学技术来描述这些网络以及网络随时间的变化。这些分析的结果表明，尽管项目和参与教师的数量有所增加，但教师之间的成员联系保持不变。出现了更多的教师集群，某些关键教师是集群之间的重要连接者。分析还证实了网络内教师合作的跨专业性质。SNA 提供了比学习者或教师数量等典型指标更重要的评估数据。这种方法展示了中心是如何发展的，以及为了进一步发展可能需要哪些策略。随着基准的进一步发展，SNA 可以用于评估中心和研究所之间的相对有效性，以实现通过跨学科合作解决社会挑战的总体目标。随着中心和研究所努力实现其通过跨学科合作解决社会挑战的总体目标，SNA 应该指导其未来的战略决策。
