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Moe S.1, Hamran T.1
1UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Health and Care Sciences, Tromsoe, Norway
Background: Due to the growing number of old people, one of the aims of the Norwegian community health care services is to support the old population to stay independent and self-reliant in their home as long as possible. To ensure or increase their physical functioning, communication between the health care professionals is essential in order to establish unified goals and coordinated services. The physiotherapists and the home care workers usually belong to different units of the community health care services, which may challenge communication. Studies of Norwegian physiotherapists` collaboration with other health care professionals in the community health care are lacking.
Purpose: We wanted to investigate how physiotherapists and home care professionals perceive their tasks, division of responsibilities and collaboration related to the physical functioning of home care users.
Methods: Twenty-two experienced professional health care workers (physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses and social educators) attended seven focus group interviews regarding professional practice, cooperation and organization of their services. Transcripts of the interviews were applied to identify concepts from themes to categories. Theory of professionalism and the concept organizational competence informed the analysis.
Results: Both professional traditions and the organizing of community health care services restricted interdisciplinary work. Identification of rehabilitation requirements of users of home care services was found wanting. Meeting points for interprofessional discussions and transference of knowledge were random and dependent upon individuals. The home care professionals lacked competence in activating care and the physiotherapists did not respond to their lack of competence.
Conclusion(s): The community health care services towards home care users were not in line with public policy recommendations and appeared largely as arbitrary and uncoordinated.
Implications: The findings emphasize the need to identify the home care users` potential of physical functioning and to develop a systematic interdisciplinary collaboration between physiotherapists and other health care professionals. This is essential to increase the focus upon physical functioning and to improve the quality of services. Physiotherapists need to be aware that in order to transfer knowledge of practical skills, dialogue, supervision and following up is necessary.
Funding acknowledgements: Ministry of Health and Care Services, Norway.
Topic: Professional issues
Ethics approval: Approved by Norwegian Centre for Research Data (26203/2011).
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
