Engaging primary care professionals in collaborative processes for optimising type 2 diabetes prevention practice: the PREDIAPS cluster randomised type II hybrid implementation trial.

Background: There is a lack of evidence concerning the effectiveness of different strategies to engage healthcare professionals in collaborative processes that seek to optimise clinical practice. The PREDIAPS project aims to assess the effect of different primary health care (PHC) providers' engagement procedures in the creation and execution of a facilitated interprofessional collaborative process to optimise the integration of the recommended clinical practice for the prevention of type-2 diabetes (T2D) in routine PHC.

Methods: This will be a randomised cluster type II hybrid implementation trial. Nine PHC centres from the Basque Health Service (Osakidetza) will be allocated to two different procedures to engage family doctors and nurses and create an interprofessional collaborative practice to optimise the integration of a T2D primary prevention programme. All centres and PHC professionals will receive training on current guidelines in primary prevention of T2D and effective interventions to promote healthy lifestyles. Headed by a local leader and an external facilitator, centres will conduct a collaborative structured process to model and adapt the intervention and its implementation to the specific context of professionals and centres. One of the groups will apply this strategy globally, promoting the cooperation of all health professionals from the beginning. The other will perform it sequentially, centred first on nurses, who will then seek the pragmatic cooperation of doctors. All patients without diabetes aged ≥ 30 years old who attend collaborating centres at least once during the study period and found to be at high risk of developing T2D will be eligible for programme inclusion. The main outcome measures focus on changes observed in indicators of T2D prevention clinical practice at centre level after 12 and 24 months, associated with the application of one or other engagement procedure. Secondary outcomes will compare their clinical effectiveness in changing eligible exposed patients' main lifestyle behaviours and risk factors (physical activity and diet, weight, etc.) after 12 months.

Discussion: The PREDIAPS project will generate scientific knowledge on procedures for engaging PHC professional to facilitate feasible and effective adoption of proven interventions for the prevention of T2D in routine clinical practice through the application of implementation strategies.

Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03254979 . Registered 16 August 2017.