• BMJ Support Palliat Care · Sep 2014

    Medical specialists' motivations for referral to specialist palliative care: a qualitative study.

    • Emma Kirby, Alex Broom, Phillip Good, Julia Wootton, and Jon Adams.
    • School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
    • BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2014 Sep 1; 4 (3): 277-84.

    ObjectivesThe decision to refer a patient to palliative care is complex and often highly variable between medical specialists. In this paper, we examine medical specialists' motivations and triggers underpinning decision-making around referral to palliative care in order to facilitate improvements in referral practices.MethodsWe completed semistructured, qualitative interviews with 20 referring medical specialists. Medical specialists were recruited from a range of specialties in a major metropolitan area in Australia. Participants were sampled through having referred at least one patient to the specialist palliative care unit during the previous 12 months. Analysis consisted of the framework approach augmented by NVivo 9 data analysis software. Key themes were identified and tested for rigour through inter-rater reliability and constant comparison.ResultsThe major motivations/triggers identified were: (a) disease-based (eg, pain management and symptom control); (b) pre-emptive/strategic (eg, anticipation of need, preparatory objective); (c) crisis/parallel (eg, physical and psychosocial issues); and (d) team-based (eg, referral as policy/team strategy).ConclusionsReferral to palliative care is motivated by a range of individual, interpersonal and organisational factors. In order to improve the care and quality of life of patients and family caregivers, further work is needed to develop streamlined practices that are sensitive to physical and psychosocial considerations, and patient/family caregiver desires.Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

Want more great medical articles?

Keep up to date with a free trial of metajournal, personalized for your practice.
1,694,794 articles already indexed!

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.