Reflections on coordinating a multi-country paper: a means to an end, not an end in itself!

摘要

Multi-country comparative health systems research is widely used to inform policy making. Examples include: the UK On-Call Facility for International Healthcare Comparisons and the WHO European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. The International Medical Workforce Collaborative (IMWC) conference, initiated in 1996, was established to promote exchange and understanding of policy approaches across countries and international collaboration in research, and evaluation and forecasting to enhance the ability of each country to respond to workforce needs. In 2010, the IMWC committee agreed to a proposal that Australia take the lead in coordinating a multi-country paper on: "Working Together: Team-Based Models of Primary Medical Care: What's Working in Complex Care Management?" As senior research fellow at the Australian Health Workforce Institute at The University of Melbourne, I agreed to take on the challenge. This paper provides reflections on my journey, the strategies I used, and key observations about the value, as a means not an end, of multi-country papers.