Success through collaboration: Award for Inter-Professional Research
Brigitte Gantschnig and an inter-professional team have received the SAMS Award for Inter-Professionalism in Research. Networking and thinking outside the box are central to Gantschnig’s research and teaching.
Since the treatment of patients with complex diagnoses requires a cooperative approach involving various disciplines, inter-professional collaboration is gaining importance in the healthcare sector. The Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) honours outstanding examples of inter-professionalism in research and practice with the SAMS Award for Inter-Professionalism (Award Interprofessionalität).
In 2017, this award was given to the research project on the evaluation of the Bern inter-professional outpatient rehabilitation programme (BAI-Reha) for people with chronic pain. This study was conducted by the University of Bern, the University Hospital of Bern (Inselspital). A further collaborator was Brigitte Gantschnig, deputy head of the ZHAW Occupational Therapy Research Unit.
As Professor of Evaluation and Assessment, Brigitte Gantschnig teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students at the ZHAW School of Health Professions. She is also involved in research at the ZHAW Institute of Occupational Therapy, at the University Hospital of Bern clinic for rheumatology, immunology and allergies and at the University of Bern. One of her main research interests is the study of the effectiveness of inter-professional and occupational therapy-based interventions of a non-pharmacological kind.
In 2016, this led her, along with a team of partners from professional practice, to analyse three clinical studies, one of these being the evaluation of the BAI-Reha rehabilitation programme.
The team applied the results of this strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis to derive strategies for the successful implementation of complex intervention studies in Switzerland.
Award inspires further studies
The BAI-Reha study included many of the relevant promising factors, and it is very gratifying that it has now received the award. But Gantschnig hopes that this award will do more than just honour a job well done. “Because clinical intervention studies are so complex, I hope the award will be a motivation for further studies in this field,” she says. “It is crucial that we can prove the effectiveness of inter-professional and occupational therapy-based interventions on a scientific level – not least because of the need for funding.”