How many times have you had to explain what your job encompasses to family and friends? It can be never ending. But surely if you meet another healthcare professional then no explanation is necessary? It would seem that this is not always the case.

We can all agree that within modern healthcare, multi-disciplinary and collaborative working is essential to providing effective, patient-centred care but just how detrimental is professional stereotyping to this way of working?

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics states that registrants must communicate appropriately and effectively; working collaboratively to deliver the best care for the patient. Stereotyping is just one of the many factors that can inhibit this by impacting on communication between groups and then it is our patients that ultimately suffer.

Walter Lippmann, philosopher and journalist, coined the term ‘stereotype’ in 1922. He proposed that stereotypes are ‘little pictures we carry around inside our heads’ and while this process allows us to take in a lot of information about another person or group of people and boil it down to a quick perception, decision or conclusion it is often shaped by external influences which gives us pre-packaged narratives. Once these stereotypes are fixed in our minds they can induce many connotations and beliefs which may not be entirely accurate.

Not all stereotypes are negative though, for example, nurses are often viewed as caring and trustworthy, both of which are definitely important traits for their roles. However, some stereotypes can be overly traditional and/or hierarchal and certainly not reflective of current realities and scope of practice. These negative stereotypes can impact on how professionals interact with one another and also contribute to how professionals view themselves and their job satisfaction.

Join us on Thursday 27th July 2018 to discuss professional stereotypes and explore how we, as allied health professionals, respond.