Healthcare is a complex adaptive system, and efforts to improve through the implementation of best practice are well served by various interacting disciplines within the system. As a transdisciplinary model is new to clinicians, an infrastructure that creates academic-practice partnerships and builds capacity for scientific collaboration is necessary to test, spread, and implement improvement strategies. This paper describes the adoption of best practices from the science of team science in a healthcare improvement research network and the impact on conducting a large-scale network study. Key components of the research network infrastructure were mapped to a team science framework and evaluated in terms of their effectiveness and impact on a national study of nursing operations. Results from this study revealed an effective integration of the team science principles which facilitated the rapid collection of a large dataset. Implications of this study support a collaborative model for improvement research and stress a need for future research and funding to further evaluate the impact on dissemination and implementation. 1. Introduction Healthcare has been described as a complex adaptive system (CAS) that involves multiple, interdependent entities and organizational levels [1–3]. Such complexity poses a challenge for transformative change as relationships within a CAS are nonlinear and unpredictable [4, 5]. This challenge is echoed by leaders in the field of quality improvement who have identified shortcomings, such as a lack of rigorous research methods, a failure to study contextual variables, and weak evaluation designs [6–8]. These shortcomings are an indication that the interwoven processes of healthcare delivery are difficult for a single investigator to tease apart. Thus, a collaborative model that integrates multiple perspectives from several disciplines may help advance the field of improvement science and facilitate dissemination and implementation strategies. Transdisciplinary collaboration is a potentially effective model as it brings together a diverse group of individuals who fully integrate theories, methodologies, and frameworks from their respective fields to work as a cohesive unit on complex issues [9]. This differs from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration where multiple individuals work together but remain grounded in their respective ideologies [9–11]. Recently, a few studies have addressed the potential of transdisciplinary collaboration to develop effective interventions in healthcare [12–14]. Despite these
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