Cooperative Document Management

11Introduction Healthcare is a multidisciplinary settingg where profes sionals from several disciplines needd to work together to maintain or improve the healt h of patients. In recent years, cooperation in healthcare has become more andd more impo rtant for twoo reasons. The first reason is that the division of labour withinn healthcare has become more pronouncedd as patient care has become more complex with the introduction of new techniques andd machines such as keyhole surgery or computer to mography. Today, nurses carry out actions that used to lie inn the respons ibility of doctors. For example, some nurses are allowedd to give injections, nurses in h ospital can decide when it is necessary to administer drugs prescribedd by doctors as " prn " (standingg for " per re nata " , " as required "). Some tasks previously carriedd out by fully qualified nurses have been taken over by auxiliary nurses or administrative sta ff, e.g. washingg andd dressing of patients, feedingg patients, servingg meals, requestingg med ical notes from patients' GPs or hospitals etc. (Newman, 1990). The secondd reason for the increasedd importance of cooper ation inn healthcare is that a more holistic approach to patient care is now taken. P atient care is no longer solelyy medical care but involves input from healthcare professio nals comingg from several disciplines (Morgan, 1993). As Newmann (1990) states, the nursingg profession has changedd from providingg subordinate duties to doctors, to b eingg responsible for patient care with autonomous nursingg goals. Today, it is not permit tedd to discharge a patient from hospital simply on the grounds that his or her med ical treatment has finished. Nursingg or social needs have also too be met before a pat ient can be allowedd home. As is to be expected, the areas of healthcare that s ee the greatest changes towards truly sharedd patient care are the ones where professionals from di fferent disciplines have a large impact on the sharedd taskk of improvingg a patient 's state of health. For example, Geriatrics is a highly cooperative area. The different needs of elderly people can only be met by efficient cooperation of professionals from several disciplines However, the reality is sometimes different: profess ionals do not always understand each other and cooperation does not always work. Heal thcare professionals have particular interests concerningg the patients that are det erminedd by their professional role. For …