Collaboration in improving care for patients: how can we find out what we haven't been able to figure out yet?

BACKGROUND: Questions, or what the physicist and learning expert Reginald Revans called "insightful inquiry," are essential to learning. People remember and use what they discover themselves. But many habits and activities in front-line workplaces of patient care have not promoted frank discussions of what we haven't figured out yet about improving care for patients. Leaders are no longer defined by having the right answers. Leaders will be the ones who have the right questions and who promote local learning with the right questions. SUGGESTIONS FOR GETTING STARTED IN COLLABORATION. The authors suggest questions to ask to get collaborative inquiry going and cite examples they have collected. The questions and examples are grouped in seven thematic categories: Listening to and appreciating others; Thinking across disciplines and roles; Sharing ideas and linking those shared ideas to execution and deployment of change; Appreciating systems and interdependencies; Using research (including local research) to inform our practices; Using methods, skills, and techniques as facilitators of collaboration; and Working across organizational boundaries.