Good health for all: an ethnographic study of frontline professionals in general and mental healthcare and social welfare

Abstract

In this dissertation I studied how frontline professionals relate to other professionals and to clients in caring for clients with combined psychosocial problems. This is relevant, because a high number of individuals face a combination of problems that cross professions and organizations. These problems create a pressing need for collaboration across professional and organizational borders in care and social welfare. This collaboration is complex and can become problematic, because many incentives- such as policies, professional norms and finances- go against interprofessional collaboration. This is why in this dissertation I analyzed how frontline professionals, in this complex context, work with other professionals and with clients. The research context is a large city in the Netherlands.