Where’s the plot? Interprofessional collaboration as joint emplotment in acute care

Abstract

ABSTRACTHow can interprofessional health care teams be more patient-centered in their team talk in the clinical backstage? This article addresses this question in the practice of an acute care team to achieve a twofold purpose. First, we develop the notion of joint emplotment to conceptualize our observations of how acute care teams work out understandings of the patient’s situation through narrative practice, in particular in rapid-paced daily interprofessional team meetings. Second, we draw on illustrative data from a longitudinal naturalistic study of communication in interprofessional team meetings in acute care to demonstrate the usefulness of this conceptual lens for investigating a core element of patient-centered care, namely how different perspectives of the patient’s situation are made relevant and meaningful in team talk. Thus, this article makes important contributions to the literature on the role of communication in interprofessional collaboration and provides useful recommendations for practice.