I am enough! An interprofessional interaction model for workplace well-being

The main goal of the project is to enhance the well-being at work of social and healthcare professionals through multidisciplinary collaboration and interaction skills. The specific objectives are:

1. The interaction skills and well-being at work of social and healthcare professionals in multidisciplinary teamwork have improved.
2. Supervisors’ ability to support professionals in the transition toward a more multidisciplinary and less burdensome way of working has increased.
3. A well-being model for multidisciplinary interaction has been implemented as part of multidisciplinary work practices.
4. A work well-being model based on multidisciplinary interaction skills has been developed, and the results have been disseminated nationwide.

The social and healthcare service system needs significantly more interprofessional collaboration to sustain and succeed. This collaboration must transcend service lines and organizational boundaries. Clients and patients need timely and comprehensive support to ensure resources are better allocated. The evolving social and healthcare services aim for more purposeful cooperation to avoid redundant work and uncoordinated services, which burden both clients and employees. Professionals in the social and healthcare sectors constantly face challenging situations due to complex client and patient cases, tight financial resources, and ongoing changes and uncertainties. The lack of interdisciplinary, systemic work skills and excessive workloads make it difficult to adopt unified work practices. Professionals experience ethical stress because they cannot perform their duties as well as they would like, affecting their work ability and endurance. This stress also increases the desire to leave the profession.

The “I am enough!” project aims to improve the well-being of social and healthcare professionals through enhanced interprofessional collaboration and communication skills. The project’s main goal is divided into sub-goals and actions. Sub-goal 1 focuses on strengthening professionals’ interprofessional communication skills, sub-goal 2 on enhancing leaders' resilience leadership skills, sub-goal 3 on evaluating the effectiveness of the work, and sub-goal 4 on developing and disseminating a well-being model based on interdisciplinary communication skills nationwide. The project’s actions aim to strengthen the sense of belonging and self-efficacy within interprofessional teams. To enable new working methods, the project develops the necessary skills and communication practices. For many professionals, client/patient work is the most important aspect, and strengthening this retention factor supports regional and Pirkanmaa well-being area strategies.

The project sees that well-being arises from interaction, where individual workloads can be reduced, and responsibilities shared through cooperation. Effective communication helps shift from a sense of individual inadequacy to a shared experience of sufficiency within the team. Resilience-building communication is seen as a communal process rather than an individual trait. The project examines work from the clients’ and patients’ perspectives, highlighting the positive impacts of cooperation on well-being and work quality. Clients and their families are also involved in validating the results. The well-being model developed in the project will be available nationwide for use in well-being areas and other social and healthcare sectors.