Collaborator: A Midwife Who Had a Conflict with an Obstetrician—How to Transform “Contact Tics” into “Co Tactics”

Abstract

Although professional collaboration is nowadays recognized as of vital importance for the quality and safety of health care (organizations), this is especially the case in psychosomatic obstetrics and gynecology (POG). The scientific fundament for the psychosomatic approach is the biopsychosocial (BPS) model. As the name indicates, the key characteristic of this model is the combination of insights from several disciplines, including biology, psychology, and sociology. This requires the ability to collaborate with colleagues with different backgrounds in order to establish true co-creation in highly reliable teams and organizations. Because mistakes are unavoidable, collaboration relies on correction mechanisms to transform “contact tics” into “co tactics.” To do this, healthcare professionals must be willing and able to make their egos subservient to the treatment team. On the other hand, this ecosystem must be able to adapt to overarching cultural and scientific changes, which means that healthcare professionals must also create learning organizations by collaborating with each other. At the end of this chapter, we will discuss the learning organization concept in more detail. First we will focus on collaboration as defined in the CanMEDS approach.