Improving collaboration between professionals supporting mentally ill offenders

Abstract

Purpose

Interprofessional collaboration is necessary when supporting mentally ill offenders but little is understood of these interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore prison officers’ perceptions of current and desirable levels of interprofessional collaboration (relational coordination (RC)) to understand how collaboration between these systems can be improved.

Design/methodology/approach

Gittell’s RC scale was administered to prison officers within the Norwegian prison system (n=160) using an adaptation of the instrument in which actual and desired levels of RC are evaluated. This differentiates between prison officers’ expectations of optimum levels of collaboration with other professional groups, dependent on the role function and codependence, vs actual levels of collaboration.

Findings

Prison officers reported different RC levels across professional groups, the lowest being with specialist mental health staff and prison doctors and highest with nurses, social workers and other prison officers. Significant differences between desired and actual RC levels suggest expertise of primary care staff is insufficient, as prison officers request much greater contact with mental health specialists when dealing with the