[Therapeutic collaboration in the patient care team]

Therapeutic collaboration can be defined as the practical application of a common work in the bosom of the hospital staff in order to obtain, at a collective degree, a "therapeutic alliance" between the patient, his family and the crew. This group activity has, on one hand, the aim to offer to the medical-care staff a reflexion place, a support to their activities and then, to make the communication easier owing to the knowledge of the patients' psycho-social aspects; on the other hand, its purpose is to preserve the physical as affective patients' quality of life on a curative or a palliative level. Reunions are weekly set in the department to realize this common work of patients' global "cure holding", they are animated by the psychologists and bring all the staff together. The psychologists can themselves elaborate the theoretical bases of their action with a psycho-analyst supervising them weekly. Three clinical examples point different questions out about this functioning. They concern the psychologists' integration in an hospital, their functions and relations with the department's head in the limits of an intern communication system based on the expanded holding of the hospitalized patients.