SEEING STUDENTS AS POTENTIAL CO-DEVELOPERS OF FUTURE HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS PROVOKES AMBIVALENT REACTIONS

Abstract

The development of an efficient and highly specialised healthcare service has meant that patients are moved between units and sectors, and encounter staff from a number of different professions. Scandinavian patients criticise the lack of coherence in such transitions, and politicians are demanding the development of coherent care pathways for patients. This article discusses contradictions inherent in the fact that students are traditionally trained within mono-professional study programmes, even though in the future they will have to be able to create coherent pathways across the professions for patients within the healthcare system. Based on two longitudinal ethnographic studies, and using Critical Theory as a theoretical framework, this article shows how study programmes have the potential to make students co-creators of the healthcare system. These ethnographic studies focus on the profession-oriented learning context, following a specific project entitled ‘InBetween’. InBetween is a collaborative healthcare training project, aiming to develop a course of study to strengthen interprofessional patient-centred skills. In mapping out this field, the research projects explore the development of InBetween and the associated processes of individual, interprofessional and (inter)organisational learning and competence development. Using empirical data as a point of departure, we chart the development of new interprofessional communities of practice across professions, units and sectors. This article shows how communities of supervisors and students manoeuvre among contradictions arising between traditional mono-professionalism and the new interprofessionalism. The key point of this article is how the lack of tolerance of ambivalence in the field poses an obstacle to changes in healthcare.