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Nurses', midwives' and health visitors' involvement in cross-boundary working within child health services.

While A, Murgatroyd B, Ullman R, Forbes A

Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery, James Clerk Maxwell Building, King's College London, 57 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK. alison.while@kcl.ac.uk

BACKGROUND: Cross-boundary working is a key policy objective. Cross-boundary working provides the foundation for high quality provision across child health services and is imperative for an effective child protection system and the support of children and young people with health needs. METHODS: Two participative conferences were attended by 113 stakeholders utilizing the World Café focus group method. Most (87%) of the sample were nurses, midwives or health visitors. RESULTS: Many examples of cross-boundary working were identified across the different areas of practice. Remarkably few transdisciplinary examples were identified in contrast to the number of inter-agency examples. Intra-organizational boundaries across the health service were also noted. CONCLUSIONS: Considerable cross-boundary working was reported but transdisciplinary working is not yet well established across all areas of child health provision.

Published 9 January 2006 in Child Care Health Dev, 32(1): 87-99.
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