Processes of Knowing in Multidisciplinary Team Practice

Reforms in healthcare delivery have been numerous with an explicit focus on improving the efficiency and efficacy of care. One of the consequences of these changes within healthcare delivery in the UK has been the development of organised collaborations between diverse groups of healthcare workers. This study examines the processes of constructing knowledge in a medical team context. Drawing on Polanyi's theory of knowledge, the multidisciplinary patient management meetings are used to examine the processes of knowing. In setting out patient management plans, learning practices are developed, whereby team members share knowledge and manifest their tacit understandings. In these, privileging processes are also revealed, such that processes of knowing are enabled and constrained by the broader context of medical hierarchies and web of social relations. The social identities held by the various professional groups and which yield depersonalised cognitive categories, also serve to shape and direct the processes of knowing and provide a useful basis for understanding conflict during team collaboration.