Kompetensväxling - ett utbyte eller bara en avlastning? : En kvalitativ studie om en förändring i hälso- och sjukvården när arbetsuppgifter mellan olika yrkesgrupper omfördelas

Sammanfattning: This master thesis examines a change in health care, in a county council in Norrbotten’s county. This change, which is referred to as “competence-exchange” (kompetensväxling) by the studied organization, means that tasks are redistributed between different workgroups. The possibility of redistributing tasks was due to the introduction of a new occupational group called healthcare service-personnel (vårdnära servicepersonal) in the studied activity. The primary mission of Healthcare service-personnel is to perform service tasks, but also some simpler care-related tasks. The tasks provided by the healthcare service-personnel was earlier performed by the healthcare-staff in the studied organization. When healthcare service-personnel now perform service tasks, healthcare-staff can instead focus on their primary healthcare-tasks and redistribute certain healthcare-tasks between each other. The theoretical starting points in the paper are bureaucracy, power and authority, system theory and the interest model. Other theoretical starting points in the paper are individual and organization, previous research on the redistribution of healthcare-tasks and central concepts regarding professional and competence. The essays approach was conducted through a qualitative method of respondents from the occupational groups nurse, assistant-nurse, healthcare service-personnel, unit Manager for healthcare service-personnel, trade Unions, project leaders and organizational developer. The respondents describe their experience of the redistribution of tasks in the studied organization. The methodological starting point for this essay is based on knowledge sociology that deals with the analysis of social constructions of reality. The result shows that healthcare professionals are positive about the relief provided by healthcare service-personnel in the performance of service-tasks in the organization. However, there is some resistance to the fact that healthcare service-personnel perform care-related tasks. There are also shortcomings in the rules and methods of redistribution of tasks. The result also shows that no tasks are exchanged between staff, instead tasks are being relieved only from a top-down perspective to the professional group with lower education. In fact, there is no competence-exchange in the redistribution of tasks.