Indigenous navigators’ interprofessional collaboration in a community-based homelessness care team: challenges and opportunities

Indigenous health navigation promotes access to healthcare for Indigenous people. This descriptive single case study focuses on an Indigenous navigation program within a Montreal non-Indigenous community-based organization offering outreach healthcare in the streets for people experiencing homelessness. Our research aims to identify the nature of interprofessional collaboration within the healthcare team and to document the factors influencing it. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight members of the organization (navigators, nurses, and a manager) and analyzed with a hybrid (deductive and inductive) thematic analysis. Seven field observation sessions allowed additional nuance. Data highlighted that collaboration could facilitate access to culturally safe care, address holistic needs, and help face complexity and unpredictability intrinsic to offering healthcare in the streets. Challenges in collaboration can arise from differing experiences and perceptions, limited mutual understanding, and role ambiguity. Results show that tensions within the team were associated with the formation of subgroups among people sharing common cultural backgrounds and experiences, but individual positive relationships between members of subgroups allowed better mutual understanding. The results point to supportive practices such as diversity training, shared trust building, and reflexivity as essential to fostering collaboration.