"Nobody's Asked Me for My View": Users' Empowerment by Multidisciplinary Health Teams

Health policy in New Zealand, as elsewhere, has articulated the notion of partnership to be achieved through developing policies and practices aiming to empower users and their families. The involvement of users, family, and significant others in decisions about users' health care points to a realignment of traditional power relations through its de-centring of professionals in some domains of health care. It is suggested that family meetings to discuss users' progress and discharge plans could constitute an important mode of empowerment on the individual plane. Working within Michel Foucault's concept of discourse, this article discusses the practices of multidisciplinary teams to empower users on the structural and individual plane. Achieving significant changes in practice will likely require health professionals' attention to how their discourses position users, and the development of a reflexive and analytical response to their work points to the need for training in teamwork focusing on these dimensions. Such work requires organizational support.