Konsten att vårda och ge omsorg

A study on skills among healthcare workers investigates how healthcare workers use skills in difficult caring contexts, aiming to describe how practical knowledge is employed in decision making in occuring situations. The dialogue seminar method, with it’s elements of reading and writing to explore practical knowledge, was used to gather information. Contributing healthcare workers represent a multiplicity of experiences and perspectives. Their narratives on caring dilemmas are presented and used as framework for the study. The author creates an analogy between caring dilemmas and performing knowledge in professional art work. The narratives of the healthcare workers has been arranged in a documentary composition and on several occasion presented to a wider audience in order to make a reality-check on the study’s conclusions. The study shows how terms from professional art work such as presence, interpretation and reflexive techniques are useful in understanding skills of healthcare workers. The investigation also points out problems related to the inability of healthcare organizations to comprehend and acknowledge the practical dimension of healthcare workers skills. The study has been carried out within the KTH Advanced Programme for Reflective Practice presented at www.dialoger.se.