Homologies between Sets of Healthcare Professionals' Collaborative Working Practices in Hospitals

Recently, we see a change in the organisation of hospital health care with a re-orientation of professional standards and workflows. Here, inter professional collaboration has emerged as a fashionable management philosophy invoked as an important mechanism for the quality of patient care. Based on empirical work we draw on Bourdieu’s concept of fields to move beyond an analysis of occupational control, division of labour, gender and power as the framework for assessing the changes that inter professional collaboration may involve. We interviewed 14 differently positioned health professionals at three major hospitals in Denmark with a specific focus on interprofessional collaboration. We found that the organizational changes reproduced care hierarchies and professional closure.