Health professionals perceive teamwork with relatives as an obstacle in their daily work - a focus group interview

Health professionals must often balance between different rationalities within the hospital organisation. Having adequate time with patients, shorter waiting time and the ability to greater professional autonomy have been shown to help provide a higher quality of care. Empathy and sympathy appear to be crucial components for the health professionals and their relationship to patients.

The aim of this study was to explore health professionals' experiences of relatives to critically ill patients in order to identify aspects that may facilitate a better understanding of this teamwork.

The study was descriptive and exploratory and had a qualitative design with a phenomenological/hermeneutic orientation for the interviews. Focus group was the chosen methodology. The study comprised 19 health professionals in four focus groups.

Two themes emerged from the interviews: the hospital culture does not integrate relatives, and health professionals felt that relatives took their resources and saw them as an obstacle in their daily work.

Health professionals felt divided between the system and the individual sphere, which makes it difficult for them to integrate relatives more and see them as participants in a natural teamwork for the benefit of the patient.