The definition and deployment of differential core professional competencies and characteristics in multiprofessional health and social care teams

There has been an increasing focus on delivering health and social care services through multiprofessional and inter-agency teams. This study, undertaken in 2011, explores how different professionals within multiprofessional teams define their own and other professions’ core professional competencies, characteristics and contributions. It then compares these definitions with how different professionals deploy their time and what tasks they undertake. Sixty-four workers in four multiprofessional teams in England, within four different health and local authority areas, participated in the study. Using role repertory grids to generate constructs,which were then converted into Likert scales, and with diaries recording activities undertaken, the study compares the deployment of time and task with the views about the differential core competencies and characteristics of each profession. The study highlights important issues for consideration by multidisciplinary teams, the managers and commissioners of these teams, and by professional associations.