Problems of collaboration between hospital and community mental health services

I denne artikel præsenteres et kritisk perspektiv på de ændrede organisationsformer, der særligt ses inden for den offentlige sektor. Her samarbejdes der i højere grad om kerneopgaven på tværs af faggrupper, organisationer og sektorer, men mange tiltag gennemføres ofte på baggrund af besparelser, hvor mere samarbejde bliver svaret på effektivisering af den offentlige sektor. I denne artikel vises, hvilke dynamikker der er i spil, når det tværfaglige, tværorganisatoriske og tværsektorielle samarbejde ikke fungerer. I forhold til nærværende tema om tværfaglighed og samarbejde ønskes der i artiklen at skabe opmærksomhed om nogle af de typiske faldgruber, der kan opstå ved organisering af samarbejde på tværs.Some mental health service users need support from both hospital- and community-based services. Treatment requires well-functioning collaborating practices between different mental health organizations and professions. However, serious problems of collaboration have existed in Danish psychiatry since the 1980s, when mental health service provisions were split into two psychiatric systems. In this article, we apply a sense-making lens in a qualitative study that assesses problems of collaboration between interacting mental health service organizations. We investigate professionals’ symbolic forms of meaning making and enactments in order to shed light on the interactions between professionals from different mental health organizations. We find that five distinct dynamics constitute problems of collaboration between hospital and community professionals: Absent exchange of knowledge, misunderstanding of work domain, mutual negative stereotyping, distrust, and unequal positioning of status. We end the article by discussing the study’s implications for practice