COVID-19: A disruption of interprofessional collaboration in health care

With inspiration from the sociology of professions, this chapter explores how health professionals experienced changes in interprofessional collaboration (IC) related to working in different parts of the COVID-19 regime, which included diagnosis and treatment but also a hotline, vaccine unitsunits, and contact tracing units. During the pandemic new collaborative landscapes emerged, involving close collaboration betweenhealth professionals and employees with other qualifications. Interviews with health professionals are
analysed to examine the power negotiations and governing logics embedded in IC during COVID-19. The chapter shows how the COVID-19 regime altered IC profoundly due to the initial lack of protective equipment as well as the sense of urgency and state of emergency. The analysis shows how new and flexible
IC emerged as professionals distributed tasks with less consideration of hierarchies and established structures. As COVID-19 became part of everyday life, the traditional professional boundaries seemed to be widely re-established. An exception was contact tracing units, where health professionals were replaced with clerical workers to a large extent. This chapter provides insights into important dynamics of change and gives rise to a discussion of how and on what basis IC should be developed -– ques􀀷ons also relevant to the post-pandemic health care system.