User voice, interprofessionalism and postmodernity

Abstract

Service trends toward interprofessional collaboration and user participation can both be seen as having characteristics that have in other arenas been associated with a move from modernity to postmodernity. Key to this area are the questions of identity management and the drawing of boundaries between 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. A utopian vision of increased diversity and recombination, allowing greater opportunity for shared decision-making, is compared to a dystopia of uncertainty, abandonment and avoidance of social issues. The paper concludes with a discussion of practical and moral implications arising and a need to recognise diverse positions tempered by a shared direction for future service development.

Key Words:

• Bounday management
• identity
• interprofessionalism
• participation
• postmodernity
• systems
• users