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The focus of this study was to explore how Clinical Psychologists narrate their experience of relatedness within a multi-disciplinary team. Mental health services in the UK are facing increased financial pressure and a necessity for all professionals to justify their role. In this context value often appears to be placed on the cheapest way of providing individual, independent care for clients rather than on the relational value of job satisfaction, joint working and therapeutic relationships. The aim of this study was to explore the experience of Clinical Psychologists and through this contribute to thinking around collaborative and interdisciplinary working. This study was guided by eight individual semi-structured interviews which were conducted with Clinical Psychologists who work in Multi-Disciplinary working age adult Community Mental Health Teams and explored using Narrative Analysis. The participants consisted of seven females and one male who had been qualified between three and fifteen years and were working at various pay bands between 7 and 8c. Four relational narratives were found. These were connections to the self of the psychologist, connections to clients, connections with colleagues and connections with the system. The first relational aspect was how the Clinical Psychologists in this study storied their ability to remain connected to their own humanity and their personal values within the context of their Multi-Disciplinary Teams. The second level involved the stories about relationships and connections with clients, particularly thinking about the perceived impact and consequences of the other relational levels for the clients and their safety. The third relational aspect was the stories that Clinical Psychologists told about their sense of relatedness to their colleagues within their teams and the importance of having time available for this. Finally, the fourth level, which was evident within all the other relationships, was of the impact of the wider system and context. These stories emerged from the analysis process with the understanding that the interviews were co-constructed and represented multiple voices. This study confirmed that despite a history of both research and legislation highlighting the benefits and values of inter-professional working and compassion the reality remains elusive. To achieve these aims there needs to be a shift in focus from short-term planning evaluating efficiency in relation only to perceived financial value, to thinking more widely and long-term about relational value. There is a need for investment and recognition of the aspects of team working that are less easy to quantify financially. Further research could explore the experience of other professional groups within CMHTs, and other MDTs, and of clients. This would give a voice to individuals who did not have an explicit voice in this research.

published_or_final_version ; Public Administration ; Master ; Master of Public Administration

Narrative has been described as a universally used means for ordering experience. Although the narratives of medical teams have received recent attention, those produced by health professionals in multi-disciplinary health care teams in the course of their everyday work in team reviews and case discussions about service users have not. This paper, then, presents a discussion of an under-investigated area of narrative in the social sciences. The analysis is developed from the narratives produced during team reviews conducted over several weeks about 2 users - one a quadriplegic, the other, a psychiatric patient in a medium secure unit. The major issues with which the paper is concerned are: (i) the identification and explanation of significant differences between the narratives produced by medical and multi-disciplinary teams; (ii) the identification of a suppressed dimension (both in the literature on health care teams, and in the practice of these teams) on the management of difference in the development of complex multi-disciplinary team narratives; and (iii) how members of MD teams work with the different professional knowledges represented by their members. The final section of the paper defines team work as primarily a process of knowledge work and knowledge creation, and it discusses some of the organizational conditions which facilitate such work.

There are increasing opportunities for researchers to work in multi-disciplinary research teams; however, the extensive literature on research practice barely refers to the challenges inherent in this approach. The article describes the experience of a multi-disciplinary team which was engaged in investigating the nature of technological learning in relation to productivity improvement in the dairy farming industry in New Zealand. The largely qualitative, multi-method approach taken to the project by the team is described, and the description supplemented by reflection on the factors that led to the key decisions in the research design process, and the consequences of these decisions.

This paper addresses the concept of concurrent engineering (CE) and its application to construction. The construction process is faced with an ephemeral shifting coalition of participants who have divergent goals and objectives. Consequently, adversarial relationships between project participants have developed. This has made it difficult for organizations to cooperate, communicate and integrate with each other effectively. The CE concept advocates the implementation of a multi‐disciplinary team approach to construction by encouraging collaborative decision making based upon team coordination and information sharing. This paper suggests that a multi‐disciplinary approach can be achieved by introducing the contractor, major subcontractors and suppliers during the design phase.

Considers the problems of a multi‐disciplinary team working together to understand and evaluate a healthcare information system, which itself is situated in a complex organisational and political environment. Provides general discussion of problems faced by evaluators of such systems. Describes this specific evaluation project (Electronic Patient Records in the UK National Health Service), gives an account of the evaluation process as it occurred, highlights some of the problems encountered, and discusses attempts to overcome these. Suggests that social, organisational and political factors are inherent in all such research enterprises, and that in order to facilitate a rich understanding of complex systems, these factors must also be considered as part of the research data.

Following the example of the private sector, the public sector in the United States has been undergoing process‐reengineering, most notable in the Federal Government with the National Performance Review (NPR). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) asked its overseas missions for volunteer participation as Country Experimental Laboratories (CELs) during USAID's NPR efforts. USAID/ Senegal, in French West Africa, became a CEL in the spring of 1994. The reengineering, occurring over a two‐year period, created multi‐disciplinary teams centered around Strategic Objectives (SOs). This article describes the experience and lessons learned from developing and implementing financial management policies and procedures to support the SO Teams, while concurrently ensuring that accountability requirements were met. The article uses the case study format, delineating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the Mission Controller, the trade‐offs between the decentralization of program management and accountability, and the organizational relationships established to reengineer the financial management processes at USAID/Senegal.