Teams as Author: Narrative and Knowledge Creation in case Discussions in Multi-Disciplinary Health Teams

A. Opie

Sociological Research Online, 1997, vol. 2, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: Narrative has been described as a universally used means for ordering experience. Although the narratives of medical teams have received recent attention, those produced by health professionals in multi-disciplinary health care teams in the course of their everyday work in team reviews and case discussions about service users have not. This paper, then, presents a discussion of an under-investigated area of narrative in the social sciences. The analysis is developed from the narratives produced during team reviews conducted over several weeks about 2 users - one a quadriplegic, the other, a psychiatric patient in a medium secure unit. The major issues with which the paper is concerned are: (i) the identification and explanation of significant differences between the narratives produced by medical and multi-disciplinary teams; (ii) the identification of a suppressed dimension (both in the literature on health care teams, and in the practice of these teams) on the management of difference in the development of complex multi-disciplinary team narratives; and (iii) how members of MD teams work with the different professional knowledges represented by their members. The final section of the paper defines team work as primarily a process of knowledge work and knowledge creation, and it discusses some of the organizational conditions which facilitate such work.

Keywords: Effectiveness; Multi-Disciplinary; Narrative; Post-Modern; Qualitative Methodology; Team Work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:2:y:1997:i:3:p:1-14

DOI: 10.5153/sro.101

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