Bridging the “system's” gap between interprofessional care and patient safety: Sociological insights

Abstract

This paper is based on the premise that a systemic approach is the crucial link between patient safety and interprofessional care. It is argued that there has been little concern with regard to the need for a critical assessment and development of a systems' theoretical model able to envisage the broad approach of delivery of health care that patient safety initiatives require. Based on a medical sociology approach, the paper analyzes four forces that threaten a well sustained development of research and problem-solving strategic proposals that are to be derived from the intersection of patient safety and interprofessional care, namely: (i) the absence of explicit theoretical models in empirical research work in both fields; (ii) the a-critical acceptance of an ideologically limited biomedical paradigm in the actual systemic definitions of the clinical model; (iii) a fragmentation of the underlying system concept that is unable to include all of the actors of the system; and, (iv) the need to go beyond the non-maleficence principle and include the remaining three bioethical principles in medical care. The paper concludes with the proposal of developing theoretically grounded empirical interprofessional research that allows the crucial inclusion of social sciences in the systemic approach.

Keywords:

• Interprofessional care
• patient safety
• systems' theory
• medical sociology
• health services research
• medical care bioethics