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Interaction during four to seven meetings of four interdisciplinary health care teams was videotaped and coded for amount of interaction initiated and received by doctor, nurses, and nutritionists in each team. Process categories such as “asks opinion,” “gives information,” and “gives order,” were also coded for each participant in each meeting. A model of collegial interaction was developed, and the teams were compared with the model.

Outcome data, consisting of measures of social, physical, physiological, and emotional functions were combined into an index of changes in health status. This index was available for the patients under the care of each team. Teams were rank ordered according to the success of their patient outcome six months and one year after the team care was initiated.

Results indicate that: (1) All of the teams differed from the collegial model; (2) there were differences among the teams in the extent to which they reflected the collegial model; these differences were present both for participation and for pattern data; (3) the rank order of the teams on a combined (participation plus pattern) collegiality score matched exactly the rank order of the teams on success of patient outcomes.

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