[An interprofessional or an interdisciplinary problem? Distinctions to develop an analytical scheme of interdisciplinarity based on the case of a long-term care hospital]

This communication distinguishes interdisciplinary problems from other neighbouring difficulties, such as difficulties related to work organization. The conceptual proximity between discipline and profession can in fact cause difficulties experienced in the interprofessionnal space to mistakenly incriminate interdisciplinarity. For the analyst, this proximity blurs his insight and, in effect, inhibits the development of adequate solutions to the encountered problem. Hence, this article, based on an ethnographic study of interdisciplinary relations in a small long-term care hospital, aims to alleviate the ambiguity surrounding this issue. In order to do so, this article will begin by recalling the parameters of the theoretical field of interdisciplinarity. Subsequently, the difficulties observed in the long-term care hospital's setting, as they were conceived in the light of interdisciplinarity theory, will be exposed. This article will notably highlight how the nursing staffs contribute to the maintenance of a philosophy of care favourable to the long term deployment of interdisciplinarity.