Interprofessional relationships and collaborative working: encouraging reflective practice

A challenge for those involved in the education and professional development of health and social care practitioners is to find ways of encouraging and enabling them to critically reflect upon complex collaborative situations and consider how they might improve interprofessional relationships. To meet this challenge, we piloted and developed a reflective exercise derived from methods used in personal construct psychology (Hargreaves,1979; Salmon,1994), which has proved to be useful in three overlapping areas; research, professional development, and classroom teaching. To illustrate the technique, this paper presents a case study of one district nurse who used the method to help her examine complex interprofessional relationships when providing long-term community care. The reflective technique (which uses arrow-shaped cards displayed on large visual layouts) was found to provide a rich description of the individual's relationships. By employing the visual displays the district nurse was able to explore the meanings of professional identity and roles in terms of professional relationships, and to consider her intentions and actions within a complex multidisciplinary situation.