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School of Public HealthPublic Health Practice - Research ProjectComprising Public Health Practice Units, including the China Health Program, and Public Health Law. An Evaluation of Trust in a Primary Health Care SystemResearcher:Associate Professor Rae Walker Funding: National Health and Medical Research Council (2002/2003) Research Partners: Primary Care Partnerships SummaryThe aim of this study was to describe and analyse how people within the primary health care system create and maintain relationships of trust between individuals, and between organisations.In the past decade primary care organisations have found themselves in an environment of major change. As the environment became more competitive agencies were required to work more closely together.The current Primary Care Partnership Strategy requires a high level of collaborative work.Trust is a key issue in collaborative relationships between individuals and between organisations. As organisations and/or individuals form social relationships with one another, trust may develop permitting a greater degree of cooperation with less effort. Trust has been described as an efficient lubricant of relations. It is to be expected that trust will be a key issue in the successful development of the Primary Care Partnership service integration arrangements.To understand trust within an organisational system it is necessary to investigate the processes by which a) individuals from the organisations interact with each other (eg people act in trustworthy ways), b) characteristics of organisational systems and the intra-organisational interactions impacting on external relationships in the inter-organisational system (eg support provided to organisational representatives to act in trustworthy ways), and c) aspects of the institutional environment (eg competitive requirements) that impact on inter-organisational relationships. In this study these three areas were investigated in order to develop an understanding of how people within the primary health system create and maintain relationships of trust between individuals, and between organisations, pursuing system integration within the sector.
Status of the project: Completed Research Outputs to date:Conference PresentationsPublicationsUnpublished Reports |