Using Social Network Analysis to Identify Key Players within Clinical Teams for Improving Pain Management

The use of social network analysis to understand social relationships among individuals in healthcare is a relatively recent and innovative approach. This approach has been employed to study phenomena such as disease contagion, smoking cessation, and physical collaboration. This paper presents a social network analysis conducted among clinicians in three nursing units of a large metro hospital. The aim was to examine information flow with regard to pain management in addition to explore the evolving nature of the represented network over time. For the study, social network surveys were administered to investigate characteristics of three identified nursing units. Three network questions were used to explore relationships and information flow: (a) Who do you routinely work with on pain management? (b) Who do you get new ideas or inspiration from to help your pain management efforts? (c) Who would you like to work with in the future on pain management? Two surveys were conducted to collect data over time, and standard social network measures were computed to study the interaction network and its evolving nature. Data analysis provided insights into the nature of interactions within and across these groups and thereby successfully identified key players in information flow with regard to pain management.