General practitioners' perceptions about their role in current and future heart failure care: an exploratory...

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• General Practice
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Heart failure (HF) care requires a comprehensive disease management programme (DMP) with general practitioners (GPs) playing a central role.
• Previous research indicates GPs have varied experiences with multidisciplinary HF care.
• This study explores GP perceptions of their current and future roles in HF care before designing a DMP.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate general practitioners' perceptions of their roles in current and future heart failure care.
• To inform the design of a new heart failure disease management programme.
• To identify optimal models for multidisciplinary collaboration in heart failure management.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study utilizing semi-structured interviews with Belgian general practitioners.
• Data saturation was achieved through iterative interviewing.
• The QUAGOL method was employed for data analysis.

Main Results:

• GPs aspire to a central role in heart failure care.
• Collaboration with cardiologists is perceived positively due to accessibility.
• Collaboration with home care nurses is suboptimal due to communication and knowledge variability.
• GPs prefer general practice nurses for task delegation and desire a flexible, patient-centered, multidisciplinary care pathway without added administrative burden.
• Limited experience with specialist HF nurses was reported.

Conclusions:

• GPs need a protocol-driven care pathway for chronic heart failure management.
• The future pathway should be flexible, minimize administrative tasks, and maintain a central GP role.
• Addressing collaboration challenges with nurses is crucial for effective HF DMPs.