Professional perceptions of joint working in primary care and social care services for older people in Scotland

The purpose of this paper is to report health and social care professionals' perceptions on joint working for the care of older people in Scotland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 primary care and social care professionals. These professionals emphasised that joint working requires a fundamental change in thinking and a scrutiny of professional roles and identities and is influenced by the given geographical and organisational infrastructure. In order to facilitate sustained joint working knowledge and models of care bespoke to joint working need to be developed. This requires health and social care organisations to focus on the co-creation and generation of new knowledge by health and social care professionals as well as the communication and exchange of existing knowledge between services. However, joint working also needs to be based on patient views to guarantee a whole systems perspective.