Samenvatting

In mental healthcare, blended care (online combined with face to face treatment) is presented as a mundane practice. Most mental health care organizations have ‘opened’ their electronic patient records for patients, as well as provided for online treatment interventions like psycho-education and cognitive behavioral therapy, so patients can work on their issues at home. This presentation of blended care in mental health care fits organizational and governmental policies, as online treatment is expected to help solving the problems of labor shortage in care and fit the self-managing patient. When zooming in though, we found how care professionals have to deal with all kinds of practical or fundamental issues on blended treatment. Some care professionals deal with hindrances hands on like “apps for texting are not supposed to be used for safety reasons, but they are quick and easy and hold all kinds of opportunities for contact with patients”. At the same time, there are care professionals that do not know how to adjust their routines and find it difficult to make use of online modules in a good way. In our ethnographic research, we add image to text and discuss with care professionals and patients what we observe and encounter in different ways. In this way, we articulate patients’ and care professionals’ knowledge and experience with blended care, and aim to help them solve their hindrances.