Health and social work practitioners’ experiences of working with risk and older people: The interconnectedness of personalities, process and policy

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.

Citation

Beech, C. and Verity, F. (2020), "Health and social work practitioners’ experiences of working with risk and older people: The interconnectedness of personalities, process and policy", Journal of Integrated Care, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 197-211. https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-08-2019-0036