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General practice and specialist palliative care teams: an exploration of their working relationship from the perspective of clinical staff working in N ew Z ealand
Author(s) -
Keane Barry,
Bellamy Gary,
Gott Merryn
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
health and social care in the community
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.984
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1365-2524
pISSN - 0966-0410
DOI - 10.1111/hsc.12296
Subject(s) - general partnership , palliative care , nursing , perspective (graphical) , focus group , medicine , end of life care , psychology , medical education , public relations , sociology , business , political science , finance , artificial intelligence , computer science , anthropology
With the future focus on palliative and end‐of‐life care provision in the community, the role of the general practice team and their relationship with specialist palliative care providers is key to responding effectively to the projected increase in palliative care need. Studies have highlighted the potential to improve co‐ordination and minimise fragmentation of care for people living with palliative care need through a partnership between generalist services and specialist palliative care. However, to date, the exact nature of this partnership approach has not been well defined and debate exists about how to make such partnerships work successfully. The aim of this study was to explore how general practice and specialist palliative care team (SPCT) members view their relationship in terms of partnership working. Five focus group discussions with general practices and SPCT members ( n = 35) were conducted in 2012 in two different regions of New Zealand and analysed using a general inductive approach. The findings indicate that participants’ understanding of partnership working was informed by their identity as a generalist or specialist, their existing rules of engagement and the approach they took towards sustaining the partnership. Considerable commitment to partnership working was shown by all participating teams. However, their working relationship was based primarily on trust and personal liaison, with limited formal systems in place to enable partnership working. Tensions between the cultures of ‘generalism’ and ‘specialism’ also provided challenges for those endeavouring to meet palliative care need collaboratively in the community. Further research is required to better understand the factors associated with successful partnership working between general practices and specialist palliative care in order to develop robust strategies to support a more sustainable model of community palliative care.