Institutional integration of a new profession into the social system: experience of introducing the clinical psychologist position

This article presents a comprehensive sociological analysis of the social integration of clinical psychologists into Ukraine’s healthcare system. The authors address the fundamental scientific problem of operationalising and empirically measuring integration, thereby bridging the gap between abstract metatheoretical constructs and concrete indicators of a specialist’s inclusion in the organisational environment. The theoretical and methodological foundation of the study comprises T. Parsons’ systems theory (the AGIL framework), N. Luhmann’s autopoietic approach, H. Esser’s concepts of multidimensional integration, D. Lockwood’s distinction between system and social integration, and T. Schwinn’s layered model of socialisation. On this basis, an original analytical model was developed, identifying four levels of clinical psychologist integration: institutional-normative, cultural, team-based, and object-based. The empirical basis was formed by a representative sociological study conducted in 2025–2026 in partnership with the international humanitarian organisation “IsraAID” and the research company MCG. The sample comprised 1,834 respondents – clinical psychologists, physicians, allied healthcare personnel, and administrative representatives – across all macro-regions of Ukraine and three tiers of medical care. The article provides a thorough analysis of the institutional conditions of professional activity, the dynamics of demand for psychological services, medical staff’s perceptions of the psychologist’s functions, interdisciplinary interaction, organisational conflict, and collaboration-building strategies. It was revealed that the integration of psychologists is not a binary state, but rather a continuum realised at basic operational, professional-team, and organisational-developmental levels. Significant differences were recorded in the perception of the psychologist’s role and workload depending on professional position, age of the respondent, and the tier of the healthcare facility; risk zones associated with stereotyping and inflated administrative expectations were identified. The study findings demonstrate that despite a generally high level of institutional support for continuous professional development, systemic regulatory mechanisms, supervisory support, and access to digital registries remain incompletely developed, creating structural constraints on the full inclusion of clinical psychologists in multidisciplinary teams. The novelty of the work lies in combining a systems-theoretical framework with a large-scale empirical analysis, which, for the first time, allows measuring the integration of clinical psychologists as a multidimensional phenomenon within the national context.