Barriers Faced by Healthcare Providers during Home Visits of Palliative Care Patients - A Qualitative Study

We, the Department of Community Medicine, have been training healthcare providers for palliative care in the hospital and community setting. There were many difficulties in providing proper palliative care. The objective is to explore the various difficulties faced by Junior Residents, auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) and medical social workers (MSWs) during the home visits of palliative care patients and to address those difficulties in future visits.

The study was conducted in our peripheral institutions such as the Rural Health Training Centre and the Urban Health Training Centre among Junior Residents, ANMs and MSWs who had provided palliative care for the patients. Qualitative study design includes participatory research action techniques such as force field analysis, cobweb diagram, and pairwise ranking, and Systematic techniques include the Delphi technique.

Indicators for difficulties faced by Junior Residents were derived and plotted based on priorities and joined to form a cobweb diagram. Difficulties were time constraints, lack of resources such as medications and transport facilities, need for specialist care, and non-adherence to the advice. Driving force and restraining force for palliative care were derived and plotted on the force field analysis. The favourable factors in providing palliative care services of the healthcare providers are self-satisfaction with treating the patient, satisfaction due to treatment at the doorstep, understanding the patient's psychological or social factors affecting their health, skill development and counselling of the patient. The restraining factors in providing palliative care services of the healthcare providers are time constraints, lack of resources, patient not following the advice properly, improper care by caregivers and unable to fulfill certain needs of the patient. Pairwise scoring/ranking was done for MSWs by plotting the issues faced in palliative care visits in rows and columns. The difficulties were time constraints, lack of resources, lack of proper knowledge of staff and need for specialist care. The possible potential solutions derived from the Delphi technique were proper planning to reduce time constraints and intense counseling of patients on adherence to treatment.

It helped to identify the difficulties faced by healthcare providers and to plan for solutions in future palliative home care visits.