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1 – 10 of over 12000Christian Beech and Fiona Verity
The purpose of this paper is to explore interprofessional and multidisciplinary working between health and social care practitioners providing services to older people through the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore interprofessional and multidisciplinary working between health and social care practitioners providing services to older people through the prism of how risk is assessed and managed. It proposes that whilst interprofessional and multidisciplinary working is a broad and commonly researched topic, there is a relative paucity of evidence specifically regarding how health and social care practitioners work together across structural, cultural and ideological divides. The study aims to expand the domain of integrated health and social care by including perceptions, understanding and use of the concept of risk by professionals from different disciplines.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based upon an exploratory study using an interpretivist phenomenological perspective, including 23 semi-structured individual interviews with health and social care practitioners and 2 non-participant observations of multidisciplinary team meetings.
Findings
The paper provides empirical insights around the complex dynamics of interprofessional and multidisciplinary working between health and social care practitioners, in particular the saliency of the interconnectedness of individual practitioner Personalities with the Process of interprofessional and multidisciplinary working under the auspices of relevant Policy drivers.
Research limitations/implications
The research was conducted in Wales and, due to the increasingly divergent policy context within the UK, the research results may lack generalisability from a wider UK or international perspective. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the propositions of this research further.
Practical implications
The paper includes implications for both interprofessional and multidisciplinary policy and practice with older people. With new models of integrated care being sought, the findings of this study may offer a timely and valuable contribution, particularly from the inclusion of a social care perspective and in better understanding the interconnectedness of practitioner personalities with process and policy.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to study the complex dynamics and interconnectedness between health and social care practitioners who work together to provide services to older people.
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Cathy Bailey, Julie Doyle, Susan Squires, Cliodhna ni Scanaill, Chie Wei Fan, Cormac Sheehan, Clodagh Cunningham and Ben Dromey
This paper seeks to discuss the authors' experiences of multidisciplinary practice in relation to developing home‐based assisted living technologies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to discuss the authors' experiences of multidisciplinary practice in relation to developing home‐based assisted living technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on almost three years' experience of working within an ongoing, large, multi‐sited and multidisciplinary Irish national research programme: the Technology for Independent Living Centre. This involved industry and academic partners. Teams of clinicians, physical and social scientists, technologists, engineers, designers and ethnographers worked with older adults to design, test and deliver, home‐based technologies that focus on mitigating falls, keeping socially connected and maintaining or improving cognitive function. The authors' experiences and challenges are organised and presented through their retrospective team building model: ENDEA and through comparison with team building literature.
Findings
Learning outcomes and implications for technology focused multidisciplinary practice are offered. The paper concludes that a vital step in developing successful assisted living technologies with and for older adults is to spend resources on building effective, creative and committed multidisciplinary teams and practices.
Originality/value
The model, ENDEA, is proposed which is a blueprint for successful outcomes, through the management and delivery of multidisciplinary research.
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Jill Perry-Smith and Leslie Vincent
In this chapter, we focus on the people component of the technology commercialization process. We review how the need for a variety of skills and knowledge sets creates unique…
Abstract
In this chapter, we focus on the people component of the technology commercialization process. We review how the need for a variety of skills and knowledge sets creates unique challenges and opportunities for the team, particularly given the complexities associated with commercialization and the need for creativity throughout the process. We suggest that simply having a multidisciplinary team in place does not ensure success and highlight the potential benefits and liabilities. In particular, we highlight the relevance of team composition in terms of professional orientation and social network ties. We then review how team composition influences internal team processes.
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Jill Perry-Smith and Leslie H. Vincent
In this chapter, we focus on the people component of the technology commercialization process. We review how the need for a variety of skills and knowledge sets creates unique…
Abstract
In this chapter, we focus on the people component of the technology commercialization process. We review how the need for a variety of skills and knowledge sets creates unique challenges and opportunities for the team, particularly given the complexities associated with commercialization and the need for creativity throughout the process. We suggest that simply having a multidisciplinary team in place does not ensure success and highlight the potential benefits and liabilities. In particular, we highlight the relevancy of team composition in terms of professional orientation and social network ties. We then review how team composition influences internal team processes.
Anneke Fitzgerald and Graydon Davison
The purpose of the paper is to show that free flowing teamwork depends on at least three aspects of team life: functional diversity, social cohesion and superordinate identity.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to show that free flowing teamwork depends on at least three aspects of team life: functional diversity, social cohesion and superordinate identity.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes the approach of a discussion, arguing for a strong need to understand multidisciplinary and cross‐functional barriers for achieving team goals in the context of health care. These barriers include a strong medically dominated business model, historically anchored delineations between professional identities and a complex organisational environment where individuals may have conflicting goals.
Findings
The paper finds that the complexity is exacerbated by the differences between and within health care teams. It illustrates the differences by presenting the case of an operating theatre team.
Research limitations/implications
Whilst the paper recommends some ideas for acquiring these skills, further research is needed to assess effectiveness and influence of team skills training on optimising multidisciplinary interdependence in the health care environment.
Originality/value
The paper shows that becoming a team member requires team membership skills.
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Suzanne Withington and Henri Giller
The authors suggest that their recently developed curriculum guidance on multidisciplinary working for DipSW students in Northern Ireland raises some key issues of relevance to…
Abstract
The authors suggest that their recently developed curriculum guidance on multidisciplinary working for DipSW students in Northern Ireland raises some key issues of relevance to health and social care professionals coming to grips with the integrated‐working imperative of the new NHS Plan.
The purpose of this paper was to study how psychiatric doctors practise leadership in multidisciplinary healthcare teams. The paper seeks to answer the question: How do…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to study how psychiatric doctors practise leadership in multidisciplinary healthcare teams. The paper seeks to answer the question: How do psychiatric doctors lead multidisciplinary teams during treatment conferences?
Design/methodology/approach
Six psychiatric teams were studied at a university hospital. Each team was observed over a period of 18 months, and data were collected during four years (2008-2011). Data were collected through interviews with doctors (n = 19) and observations (n = 30) of doctors’ work in multidisciplinary psychiatric teams.
Findings
Doctors in a multidisciplinary team use either self-imposed or involuntary leadership style. Oscillating between these two extremes was a strategy for handling the internal tensions of the team.
Research limitations/implications
The study was a case study, performed during treatment conferences at psychiatric wards in a university hospital. This limitation means that there is cause for some caution in generalising the results.
Practical implications
The results are useful for understanding leadership in multidisciplinary medical teams. By understanding the reversible logic of leadership, cooperation and knowledge sharing can be gained, which means that a situation of mere peaceful coexistence can be avoided. Understanding the importance of the informal contract makes it possible to switch leadership among team members. A reversible leadership with an informal contract makes the team less vulnerable. The team’s professionals can thus easily handle difficult situations and internal tensions, facilitating leadership and management of multidisciplinary teams.
Originality/value
Doctors in multidisciplinary psychiatric teams use reversible leadership logic.
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Karen Miller, Jan Walmsley and Sadie Williams
There is robust evidence that good teamwork is essential to the delivery of high‐quality healthcare. This paper reports on a leadership intervention to improve team‐working in…
Abstract
There is robust evidence that good teamwork is essential to the delivery of high‐quality healthcare. This paper reports on a leadership intervention to improve team‐working in multidisciplinary clinical teams and the health outcomes of those populations served by them. The Shared Leadership for Change initiative was funded and managed by The Health Foundation as part of its portfolio of leadership awards. The initiative sought to support the development of ‘shared’ leadership in the teams through the intervention of specially trained and supported leadership development consultants who worked with clinical teams delivering diabetes care working across primary and secondary sectors. The paper explains the rationale underpinning the approach, describes how the intervention was operationalied, and presents findings on its impact to date. The authors conclude by advocating that given the right context this intervention is an effective approach that leads to improved clinical team effectiveness and better multidisciplinary working in modern healthcare. The difficulties of ascribing any improvements in clinical outcomes or the patient experience to the interventions are also explored.
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Benoît Freyens and Marguerite Martin
Training multimedia projects often face identical knowledge‐transfer obstacles that partly originate in the multidisciplinarity of the project team. The purpose of this paper is…
Abstract
Purpose
Training multimedia projects often face identical knowledge‐transfer obstacles that partly originate in the multidisciplinarity of the project team. The purpose of this paper is to describe these difficulties and the tools used to overcome them. In particular, the aim is to show how elements of cognitive psychology theory (concept maps, semantic networks) and instructional theory (the Gagné taxonomy) combined with mainstream epistemological research help formalise and transmit industrial knowledge through the design of training multimedia.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports on action research spanning over ten years, taking stock of the experience gathered through 15 training multimedia projects in three large European organisations and their subsidiaries. Knowledge formalisation and transfer methods are illustrated with various examples and industrial applications.
Findings
Provided certain conditions and criteria are respected, these tools help unlock various knowledge transfer barriers specific to multidisciplinary training multimedia projects, not only by contributing to tacit knowledge elicitation and codification into the training multimedia resource, but also by providing an interdisciplinary communication vector.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is not concerned with issues such as collaborative use or multidisciplinary support for remote learning platforms, which offer a possible way to extend the analysis.
Practical implications
The knowledge formalisation methods presented in this paper can be applied to any form of project aimed at transferring intra‐disciplinary industrial knowledge within an organisation. In addition, education and training professionals (ETPs) constitute the pivotal element in this process and as such are indispensable to the successful implementation of training multimedia projects.
Originality/value
There is little existing research on knowledge transfer problems intrinsic to multidisciplinary team working in training multimedia projects. The article sheds light on these issues by putting together hitherto unconnected elements of conceptual analysis, which arose from fieldwork.
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Alina Haines, Elizabeth Perkins, Elizabeth A. Evans and Rhiannah McCabe
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the operation of multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings within a forensic hospital in England, UK.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the operation of multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings within a forensic hospital in England, UK.
Design/methodology/approach
Mixed methods, including qualitative face to face interviews with professionals and service users, video observations of MDT meetings and documentary analysis. Data were collected from 142 staff and 30 service users who consented to take part in the research and analysed using the constant comparison technique of grounded theory and ethnography.
Findings
Decisions taken within MDT meetings are unequally shaped by the professional and personal values and assumptions of those involved, as well as by the power dynamics linked to the knowledge and responsibility of each member of the team. Service users’ involvement is marginalised. This is linked to a longstanding tradition of psychiatric paternalism in mental health care.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should explore the nuances of interactions between MDT professionals and service users during the meetings, the language used and the approach taken by professionals to enable/empower service user to be actively involved.
Practical implications
Clear aims, responsibilities and implementation actions are a pre-requisite to effective MDT working. There is a need to give service users greater responsibility and power regarding their care.
Originality/value
While direct (video) observations were very difficult to achieve in secure settings, they enabled unmediated access to how people conducted themselves rather than having to rely only on their subjective accounts (from the interviews).
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