Constructing interprofessional collaboration through intercultural narratives: a study of an interprofessional healthcare team’s meetings

Interpersonal communication is recognized as fundamental to interprofessional collaboration in healthcare; however, its processes remain understudied. We examined the interactive processes of constructing and negotiating interprofessional collaboration and professional identities as intercultural communication. We aimed to understand how intercultural narratives employed in an interprofessional healthcare team's meetings inform the construction of interprofessional collaboration. We used the framework of "small culture formation on the go" to investigate how people jointly construct rules, meanings, and relationships to position themselves and others. The theory we employed is based on the concepts of block and thread narratives: Blocks emphasize cultural boundaries between professions; threads create common ground. Positioning and thematic analysis was used on a dataset of audio recordings and transcripts of five meetings among nurses, physiotherapists, and ward clerks working in a Finnish hospital. The findings show that besides highlighting differences, blocks were used to organize collaboration and negotiate structural issues in interprofessional healthcare teamwork. Threads constructed shared understanding of joint processes, team membership, and patient-centeredness, reinforcing the mutual objectives of collaborative care. These findings challenge the original framework that views block narratives as something to avoid. We argue that in interprofessional settings, both blocks and threads can be beneficial, if not essential.