Abstract:
Collaboration amongst stakeholders remains a central tenet to achieving goals in planning,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of HIV and AIDS prevention and care strategies.
This paper describes the experiences of members of a health care team who joined efforts to
collaborate and form a community of practice (CoP) in HIV and AIDS. Qualitative,
exploratory case study methods were used. Twenty-six participants were interviewed.
Transcripts from the interviews were subjected to the thematic framework of data analysis.
Based on the analysis, three themes emerged as impacting on collaboration and these were:
the understanding and expectations of being a CoP member; professionalism and ethics
within the CoP and collaboration in HIV and AIDS care. The key findings were that the
understanding and expectations from the CoP varied. Ethical principles including respect,
trust and confidentiality were identified as key tenets of collaboration and were expressed in
various ways. The expectations of being a CoP member, the ethical principles within the CoP
all impacted in differing ways on how they collaborated. The implication of this study
suggests that consultation during inception and throughout the process, clarification of roles,
transparency and respect are cardinal points in professional relationships.
