Browsing by Author "Vuokko, Leena"

Objectives. Interprofessional collaboration has become increasingly important in health and social care. Collaboration with professionals in other fields is also part of the work of many speech therapists and the method has been found to benefit the work in many ways. The number of studies on interprofessional collaboration is also increasing, although the perspective of speech therapists is rarely considered. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences speech and language therapists and their team members of other professions have on interprofessional collaboration. The participants were primary health care employees working in two municipalities of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The interviewees were also asked about their views on the benefits and challenges of cooperation. In addition, it was investigated what skills the study period provided for the interviewees’ interprofessional work, as well as what qualities close cooperation requires from the employee. Methods. The study was conducted in February and March 2020 in two separate group interviews involving a total of six speech therapists, three psychologists, three occupational therapists and one nurse. The interviews were videotaped and transcribed into text files. The data was analysed by means of inductive content analysis, and the results were reviewed in the light of previous research and literature. Results and conclusions. The work of the speech therapists interviewed involved a variety of multidisciplinary practices, and the speech therapists collaborated with professionals in many other fields. The closest co-operation was in the employees' own offices, where professionals from different fields, among other things, consulted each other and met customers together. Interprofessional collaboration was thought to benefit the work in many ways, while the disadvantages were perceived to be minor. Interviewees felt that little attention was paid to interprofessional cooperation during their studies. Many felt that it would have been useful to get to know the job descriptions of future partners in particular during their studies. Based on the results of this study, speech therapists in primary health care seem to appreciate the opportunity for interprofessional collaboration. Cooperation seems to benefit their work as well as reduce work-related stress. For example, challenges in schedules, information flow, and workplace space solutions seem to make it difficult for workers to collaborate. Studies in speech therapy appear to provide rather limited skills for multidisciplinary work on the basis of this study. As cooperation with workers in other fields is usually part of the job description of speech therapists, the inclusion of multidisciplinarity more closely as part of speech therapy studies would be justified.