Collaboration between general practitioners and hospital-based specialists is essential to provide future-proof, patient-centered care. Current practice shows that there is room for improvement in this collaboration. In our research, we investigated how doctors can learn to collaborate during their training to become a general practitioner or medical specialist. We identified what needs to be learned from three perspectives: the literature, the patient, and the doctor. All studies show the importance of joint responsibility, good communication, a cooperative attitude with mutual respect and knowledge of and agreements about roles and responsibilities. In our studies on how to learn collaboration we found the importance of interaction about collaboration between doctors. In addition, it is important that the workplace facilitates learning collaboration, for example by providing role models, a safe learning environment and creating time for learning primary-secondary care collaboration.
Marijn Janssen (1983) completed her medical studies at the Radboud university medical center in 2009. She then started the postgraduate training programme to become a specialist in internal medicine at the Radboud university medical center. In 2015, she interrupted her training for PhD research. In 2020 she completed her training. She currently works as a medical oncologist at the Bernhoven hospital in Uden.