Learning and Relationships in Primary Care

Within every primary care clinic is a small team of people who provide care to a group of patients who consider this clinic to be their medical home. Rapid advances in medical knowledge and technology require that these teams constantly adapt so that they can provide the best care to their patients. The goal of this study is to examine how people in these primary care teams learn and relate to each other as they change an adapt. This will be done by observing and interviewing people who work in these teams and by giving them and their patients a survey to fill out. We will then look at the performance of these clinics to see if it is related to how they learn and the quality of their relationships. Our ultimate goal is to design effective interventions that will improve the quality and outcomes of care received by Veterans in primary care outpatient clinics within the VHA.