Article Text
Abstract
Background Recognised as an essential element in end-of-life care by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, effective teamwork can enhance the quality and safety of end-of-life care for patients in hospitals. End-of-Life Essentials (EOLE) is a Commonwealth funded project that delivers peer-reviewed, evidence-based, online education and practice change resources for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals working in hospitals. ‘Teams and Continuity for the Patient’ features in the suite of EOLE modules and includes education around effective teamwork in end-of-life care. The aim of this study was to explore the views of module learners on managing differences of opinion among staff regarding patient care management.
Methods Participants were learners (health professionals) who registered to the EOLE website and engaged with the Teams module. Learner responses to a question posed at the end of the module ‘How do you manage differences of opinion among staff regarding patient care management?’ were extracted for a 12-month period. Qualitative data were analysed thematically in NVivo V.12, with pragmatism as an overarching theoretical framework. Data were coded using an inductive, open approach, and axial coding was used to organise the codes into themes and subthemes.
Findings A total of 293 learner statements were analysed, with subthemes organised into three overarching themes: prioritising the patient, team collaboration and communication skills and emotional awareness.
Conclusion In complex, fast-paced, hospital environments, the potential for conflict among teams is high. Quality care relies on team members who work in unison, who can also recognise conflict emerging and respond in respectful and appropriate ways. In this study, the management actions reported by health professionals as proving helpful when differences of opinion among team members arise, are valuable to organisations who are considering how to prepare for quality and safety accreditation.
- teams
- communication
- education
- palliative care
- patient-centred care
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
Footnotes
Contributors KD—co-principal investigator for the End-of-Life Essentials (EOLE) project; led the writing of the manuscript. DR—co-principal investigator for the EOLE project; contributed to the drafting of this manuscript. MW—research assistant for the EOLE project; contributed to the drafting of this manuscript and managed the qualitative analysis. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. KD is responsible for the overall content as guarantor.
Funding End-of-Life Essentials (EOLE) is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, National Palliative Care Projects Agreement ID 4-E1NRR7S. Evaluation of the education is a funding requirement. The authors receive salary funding from the EOLE project.
Competing interests The authors declare no conflict of interest. The authors receive salary funding from the End-of-Life Essentials project. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.