Professionalizing action research--a meaningful strategy for modernizing services?

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Organizational Development
• Action Research

Background:

• Sustained practice development is challenging in many health and social care services.
• Acute inpatient mental health services have historically struggled with meaningful practice change.
• This paper explores a specific action research approach to address these difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically evaluate professionalizing action research (PAR) as a strategy for achieving sustainable change.
• To determine PAR's suitability for services with a history of poor practice development.
• To explore PAR's potential for modernizing healthcare services.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of action research and practice development.
• Analysis of PAR components: educative base, problem focus, improvement, and involvement.
• Keywords: action research, team learning, managing change, practice development.

Main Results:

• PAR utilizes collaborative reflective practice, grounding change in everyday situations.
• The problem focus emphasizes service user and carer perspectives, aligning with patient involvement agendas.
• Involvement and improvement are viewed as pluralistic, with acknowledged limitations.

Conclusions:

• PAR is a valuable process for service modernization, particularly in challenging healthcare contexts.
• Its strengths lie in fostering team learning and context-grounded change through collaboration.
• The approach supports sustainable practice development where meaningful change has been difficult.