Search results

The paper explores the relationships between identity struggles and their antecedents and consequences to understand identity dynamics across different professions as a process of reaction and counter-reaction to identity threats and struggles.

By adopting an integrated view of professional identity, the paper employs a systematic literature review, paying particular attention to the micro-politics and identity dynamics to explore the relationship threats, struggles and coping behaviours.

The paper maps out the threats, struggles and coping behaviours across different professions and the relationships existing between them. The paper also abstracts the findings into a conceptual model for understanding professional identity formation as an iterative process involving identity struggles, threats and coping behaviours.

The paper, bringing together studies with different theoretical and ontological approaches to professional identity, reconciles the literature to provide a detailed account of the nuances characterizing the identity work made by professionals to deal with events threatening their identities. Unlike previous studies, the paper elaborates on how threatening events and struggles shape professionals’ reactions, acknowledging the interdependency between macro, meso and micro levels. By doing so, the paper provides theoretical and practical insights into unstable identities and the work made by professionals to cope with identity uncertainty and crisis.

In this viewpoint article, the authors recognize the increased focus in health systems on co-design for innovation and change. This article explores the role of leaders and mangers in developing and enhancing a culture of trust in their organizations to enable co-design, with the potential to drive innovation and change in healthcare.

Using social science analyses, the authors argue that current co-design literature has limited focus on interactions between senior leaders and managers, and healthcare staff and service users in supporting co-designed innovation and change. The authors draw on social and health science studies of trust to highlight how the value-based co-design process needs to be supported and enhanced. We outline what co-design innovation and change involve in a health system, conceptualize trust and reflect on its importance within the health system, and finally note the role of senior leaders and managers in supporting trust and responsiveness for co-designed innovation and change.

Healthcare needs leaders and managers to embrace co-design that drives innovation now and in the future through people – leading to better healthcare for society at large. As authors we argue that it is now the time to shift our focus on the role of senior managers and leaders to embed co-design into health and social care structures, through creating and nurturing a culture of trust.

Building public trust in the health system and interpersonal trust within the health system is an ongoing process that relies upon personal behavior of managers and senior leaders, organizational practices within the system, as well as political processes that underpin these practices. By implementing managerial, leadership and individual practices on all levels, senior managers and leaders provide a mechanism to increase both trust and responsiveness for co-design that supports innovation and change in the health system.