Evaluative Feedback as a Contribution to Learning between Groups of Professionals

This article is based on an exploratory research project on the treatment of patients with asthma and allergy. The aim of the project is to develop a model for bridge building (institutionalized cooperation) between medical doctors and alternative therapists. The model might be useful for developing cooperation among other kinds of professionals in areas of services other than health care. The assumption is that the professionals' understanding of disease includes a causal reasoning that legitimates specific treatment methods and specific "outcome optics". The results, in the form of self-reported experience of learning among the professionals, are analysed on the basis of learning theory. The results indicate that differences in intervention models together with evaluative feedback from users'/recipients' assessments of the intervention can be used to stimulate learning in groups of professionals that hold very opposing views on the "right"  treatment model.