Challenging professions theory: tensions and cooperation mechanisms in interprofessional teamwork in health

Helena Serra

Chapter 5 in Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Professions, 2025, pp 61-75 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter concerns interprofessional teamwork in healthcare, in the context of health reforms, a fertile ground for interprofessional teams to achieve their goals. As semi-independent professionals who tend to represent their professional organisations and groups, frontiers between different professions act as articulating mechanisms to be found in the division of work and as barriers to the interaction of the various skills. Health reforms may not have improved the situation and open new issues concerning how cooperation between professionals is constructed as they work together in the best interest of patients. The context of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this process, highlighting the physical and social devices that facilitate or inhibit interprofessional work, as well as the scope of changes in the sustainability of teams. This brings challenges to professions theory since professionals are strongly influenced but not determined by their professional logics. The suggestion is to focus on actor-perspective explanations.

Keywords: Interprofessional teams; Post-new public management reforms; COVID-19 pandemics; Agency; Neo organisational institutionalism; Professions theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035323074
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