Partnership Working in Health and Social Care: Report on Outcomes

This report examines the concept of partnership working within the context of health and social care, focusing on its potential benefits for service users, healthcare professionals, and the organization as a whole. It explores various outcomes associated with effective partnership working, such as improved patient interaction, reduced stress for service users, and enhanced efficiency for healthcare professionals. The report identifies potential barriers to successful partnerships, including cultural issues, limited access to training, resource constraints, and heavy caseloads. It then proposes strategies to overcome these barriers, such as providing adequate training, proper resource allocation, and employing creative thinking techniques like lateral, divergent, and convergent thinking. The report emphasizes the importance of collaboration and effective communication in achieving positive outcomes within a healthcare setting, specifically referencing the case of St. Vincent's Hospital.

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
There are various outcomes that may be received with the help
of partnership working all of them affect service users,
professionals and the whole organisations. All the possible
outcomes for all of them are explained below:
For service users: Partnership working can help the patients
of the hospital to interact with all the professional easily. They
can share their problems with them to get effective solutions
for their issues. Another outcome of partnership working is
that it helps the service users to share their personal feelings
with the employees or staff members of St. Vincent's Hospital
to reduce their stress.
For healthcare professionals: Partnership working help the
healthcare professional to resolve all their conflicts with each
other and help while performing the activities in which right
and appropriate treatment is provided to the patients of
hospital. In St. Vincent's Hospital all the professional are
working efficiently so that they may get help the patients to
heal faster and they are also trying to interacting with them to
get detailed information of their issues. It was done with the
help of partnership working because it has resulted in good
and effective working environment at the hospital. As the
professionals are liable to provide best services to the patients
than partnership working help them to fulfil their
responsibilities effectively.
For organisation: Partnership working is a type of
collaborative working that motivates the employees to work
together that may provide benefits to the organisation in short
as well as long term. If professionals of different organisations
are working together and sharing their personal experience
with each other than this may help the hospital to get
advantages. If different organisation is working under
partnership than this may help them to save their costs and
resources as all of them are going to be utilised appropriately
by the professionals. In St. Vincent's Hospital a main
outcome has been recorded by partnership working which
enhanced work quality of the employees because they are
cooperating with each other and performing all the tasks
effectively.
POTENTIAL BARRIERSPARTNERSHIP WORKING
Various strategies are required in order to improve the outcome for
partnership working. These strategies play a vital role in improving the
outcomes while working in partnerships. The implementation of such
strategies will increase the job satisfaction which will enhance the
output of working partners. Management should bring out various
creative solutions for the rising problems so that the employees won't
face any problem in their work. The main strategies analysed in this
assignment report are discussed below:
 Lateral- It is a category of creative thinking which uses the
imagination power for solving the problems from different
point of views. This is very helpful in marketing, media and
advertising. Instead of a single approach, this thinking
explores multiple approaches and methodologies for finding
the solution.
 Divergent – also called creative thinking. Divergent thinking
is the efforts used for identifying all the possible solutions of a
problem through which the problem can be solved. It is more
than brainstorming. It is the way of understanding the world
and interaction among peoples. Creativity is also described as
finding new approaches and ways of solving complex
problems into simpler ways.
 Convergent- It is the capability to give a right answer of a
significant question without involving creativity. It focusses
on coming up with an appropriate answer of a problem from a
finite set of solutions. It involves putting together of different
data of a specific topic to identify the solutions in a logical
and organized manner.
When it comes to solving ideas, convergent and lateral thinking are the
necessary strategies to implement for improving the working
outcomes. These two involves various solutions but still these two goes
with the most suitable solution.
Partnership barriers have a major effect on the working of
individuals. These barriers results in lack of understanding
among different employees of an organisation and hence
effecting the performance of individuals and organisation.
These barriers lead to rise of various issues within the
working groups which will affect the productivity of the
company directly. The taken firm i.e. St. Vincent’s Hospital
can face such barriers in future which will influence the
productivity of firm. Some of these barriers are described
below:
• Cultural issues- Different peoples within the
partnerships could cause the barriers due to less
understanding of culture and behaviours. Sometimes
differences in power of position will also leads to these
issues. It prevents the building of trust among partners and
hence results in less interaction of employees.
• Limited access to training- Inadequate training
leads to such type of barriers where the working of
individuals is hindered due to inefficiency in their work.
This often leads to bad understanding between different
partnered departments.
• Limited resources- Limited availability of resources
by the management to the individuals can also work as a
barrier. Limited resources mean more time taken to execute
work which effects the productivity.
• Heavy caseloads- Large number of cases leads to
work pressure among the employees which will effects the
performance of individuals and partners. The more number
of the cases, the more they work which will lead to
disinterest of employees in work place.
These barriers can be overcome through providing necessary
skills and training so that the partners can identify their
flaws and work together for deceiving these flaws. Proper
allocation of resources and cases will lead to less pressure
which will lead to improved efficiency of working partners
and organisation.
STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES