Exploring perspectives on the management of patients with complex care needs in stroke rehabilitation: An...

Exploring the "wicked" problem of improving care for patients with complex care needs could benefit a large swath of health system stakeholders given the breadth and depth of this issue. Patients with complex health and social needs often require customized care that deviates from expected care trajectories. At Canadian Stroke Distinction sites, clinicians provide care for a high proportion of patients with complex needs while adhering to best practice recommendations.

We conducted an interpretive description study, which explored the perspectives of 16 stroke rehabilitation clinicians, four organizational key informants, and two health system key informants. We collected data via 45- to 60-minute virtual interviews and engaged in a hybrid inductive-deductive approach to analysis.

We constructed three main themes: (a) recognizing complexity is routine work for clinicians, (b) clinicians use workarounds to manage complexity, and (c) clinicians perceived and worked to bridge a difference between organizational processes and the realities of patient care. When comparing clinician and key informant perspectives, we noted differences regarding their perceptions of the prevalence and nature of patient complexity. We developed the concept of "work-as-expected" as an intermediary to bridge the gap between the "work-as-imagined" and "work-as-done" framework.

We describe the strategies used by expert clinicians to continually manage care for a high proportion of patients with complex care needs. Although expert clinicians have developed effective workarounds, they experience significant moral distress when these strategies are unable to compensate for health system limitations.

A better understanding of how clinicians manage the needs of patients with complex care needs could support policymakers and organizational leaders to consider macro- and meso-level strategies to support the adaptive practices of clinicians.