Cooperating with a palliative home-care team: expectations and evaluations of GPs and district nurses

Abstract

Background: Palliative home-care teams often cooperate with general practitioners (GPs) and district nurses. Our aim was to evaluate a palliative home-care team from the viewpoint of GPs and district nurses. Methods: GPs and district nurses received questionnaires at the start of home-care and one month later. Questions focussed on benefits to patients, training issues for professionals and cooperation between the home-care team and the GP/ district nurse. A combination of closed-and open-ended questions was used. Results: Response rate was 84% (467/553). Benefits to patients were experienced by 91%, mainly due to improvement in symptom management, ‘security’, and accessibility of specialists in palliative care. After one month, 57% of the participants reported to have learnt aspects of palliative care, primarily symptom control, and 89% of them found cooperation satisfactory. Dissatisfaction was caused mainly by lack of information from the home-care team to primary-care professionals. Conclusion: GPs and district nurses welcomed the palliative home-care team and most experienced benefits to patients. Strengthened communication initiated by the home-care team would enhance cooperation.