Factors Enabling Shared Care with Primary Healthcare Providers in Community Settings: The experiences of Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Teams

Interdisciplinary palliative care (PC) teams experience a number of barriers in their efforts to establish and maintain shared care partnerships with primary health care providers (PHCPs) in caring for patients in community settings. A qualitative study,was undertaken in southern Ontario to examine how teams negotiate barriers in order to share mutual responsibility for patients with PHCPs (i.e., family physicians and community nurses). Over a one-year period, focus group interviews (n=15) were conducted with five teams to explore their experiences to better understand the factors that enable shared care. Using a conceptual framework put forth by Williams et al. (2010), the findings reveal that teams circumvent local level barriers through four enabling factors: team characteristics, geography, adaptation of practice, and relationship building. Understanding these factors and strategies to foster them will assist other jurisdictions wanting to establish a similar shared care service delivery model.