Health promoting hospitals: Gaining an understanding about collaboration

Collaboration with others is integral to the way hospitals need to work if they are committed to integrating health promotion into policies and practices to improve the health of their "setting" and the broader community. This article reports on research that aimed (a) to identify the range of stakeholders a large metropolitan teaching hospital had collaborated with in undertaking health promotion work and how effective that relationship was, and (b) explore with these stakeholders how they had collaborated with the teaching hospital, and what had or had not worked well. Key findings were that the hospital had collaborated with at least 16 organisations. The effectiveness of these relationships was variable, with 55% (n=9) rating their relationship with the hospital as being "good to excellent" and 45% (n=7) as being "okay to unworkable". Where collaboration worked well there was good interpersonal relationships and common goals were shared. In two instances more formal mechanisms were in place to support the collaboration. These mechanisms supported involvement of staff from different levels of the hospital and did not totally rely on cooperation between individuals to sustain the collaboration.Where there was decreased effectiveness in the collaborative relationships, differing attitudes and organisational and structural barriers posed the most significant barriers.