• Lone Kolbæk
4. term, Master of Learning Processes (Continuing education) (Continuing Education Programme (Master))
Abstract in English Introduction, theory and method. This thesis has focus on the health professional’s learning processes in the team colaboration. With reference to the major political attention to interdisciplinary teamwork as the solution to the health sector’ quality and financial problems, and securing of patients receiving the continuity and coherence in their care. This holds e.g. within the neurorehabilitation area. The literature showed that the papers mostly are describing how health authorities’ are establishing interdisciplinary teamwork and the big advantages it gives for the patients. The papers do not illustrate the process of change and which learning challenges it is leading to. Therefore the focus for this thesis is: How do health professionals learn to practice as interdisciplinary teams and how interdisciplinarity is developed. Based on a socio-constructivistic thinking the theoretical framework has for improving colaboration in interdisciplinary teams and learning processes for developing the interdisciplinarity, primary been represented by papers of Lauvaas & Lauvaas (2006) and R. Stelter (2005). For expanding collective leaning processes, focusing on social learning and community of practices I have used papers of E. Wenger (2004) and for expanding individually leaning processes and transformative learning processes I have used papers of J. Mezirow (2007) The empirical data is collected on a neurorehabilitation ward at a hospital. The ward was started in 2003 and has had a formalized team structure from the start. Two focus group interviews were carried through with representatives from the 4 professionel groups which mainly forms the team structure, the social and health care assistant, the nurse, the physiotherapist and the occupational therapist. The doctor was absent. Discussion and conclusion It is of vital importance to the participants in the interdisciplinary teams, to have common ground in their common effort, and this is of benefit to the patients. When that is fulfilled, they estimate their common practice to come to a whole. The participants mostly have their affiliations with the mono professional community of practice. It is from there they define their identity and gain their strength to the arguments there are to be negotiated in the interdisciplinary team. The team has character of a specialist team with complementary and overlapping communities, and they act as an ad hoc-team with institutional boundary encounter communities. Their participation will continuously be moving between their mono professional community of practice and the ad hoc-team. And you can ask, what is it going to take for the participants to act more confident as specialists in the interdisciplinary team? Even the participants in the team say, they consider themselves equal in their cooperation, this thesis finds the team has a hierarchical structure with the nursing group as coordinator and project managers for the patient care and the team cooperation; the therapists as the experts, who comes visiting and the doctor who is absent, but anyway has a dominant position. Furthermore a field of tension is showed as for the various conflicting situations which occur in the team cooperation. The participants solve the conflict by “avoidance” which serves to an elimination of the disagreement in the team. These disagreements are solved outside the team. But because the participants are attending in a number of cross relations in various boundary encounters, it is important to focus on how the disagreements in the team can be communicated with reference to team development. This survey shows there are need for meta-discussions which relates to how the team is working. Furthermore there are needs for focusing on team work as learning processes, where the participant’s experiences, knowledge and mental powers are challenged with reference to interdisciplinary knowledge is developed. The thesis concludes that particular the team’s handling of disagreements give rice to a critical necessary team development process, that’s is not adressed in the organisation for the time being.
LanguageDanish
Publication date2008
Number of pages76
Publishing institutionInstitut for uddannelse, læring og filosofi - Ålborg Universitet
ID: 14332971