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BACKGROUND: Professional caregiving relationships are central to quality healthcare but are not always developed to a consistently high standard in clinical practice. Existing literature on what constitutes high-quality relationships and how they should be developed is plagued by dyadic conceptualisations; discipline, context and condition-specific research; and the absence of healthcare recipient and informal carer voices. This study aimed to address these issues by exploring how healthcare recipients and carers conceptualise good professional caregiving relationships regardless of discipline, care setting and clinical condition. DESIGN: A qualitative story completion approach was used. Participants completed a story in response to a hypothetical stem that described a healthcare recipient (and, in some instances, carer) developing a good relationship with a new healthcare provider. Stories were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were 35 healthcare recipients and 37 carers (n = 72 total). RESULTS: Participants' stories were shaped by an overarching discourse that seeking help from new providers can elicit a range of unwanted emotions for both recipients and carers (e.g., anxiety, fear, dread). These unwanted emotions were experienced in relation to recipients' presenting health problems as well as their anticipated interactions with providers. Specifically, recipient and carer characters were fearful that providers would dismiss their concerns and judge them for deciding to seek help. Good relationships were seen to develop when healthcare providers worked to relieve or minimise these unwanted emotions, ensuring healthcare recipients and carers felt comfortable and at ease with the provider and the encounter. Participants positioned healthcare providers as primarily responsible for relieving recipients' and carers' unwanted emotions, which was achieved via four approaches: (1) easing into the encounter, (2) demonstrating interest in and understanding of recipients' presenting problems, (3) validating recipients' presenting problems and (4) enabling and respecting recipient choice. Participants' stories also routinely oriented to temporality, positioning relationships within recipients' and carers' wider care networks and biographical and temporal contexts. CONCLUSION: The findings expand our understanding of professional caregiving relationships beyond dyadic, static conceptualisations. Specifically, the findings suggest that high-quality relationships might be achieved via a set of core healthcare provider behaviours that can be employed across disciplinary, context and condition-specific boundaries. In turn, this provides a basis to support interprofessional education and multidisciplinary healthcare delivery, enabling different healthcare disciplines, specialties, and teams to work from the same understanding of what is required to develop high-quality relationships. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: The findings are based on stories from 72 healthcare recipient and carer participants, providing rich insight into their conceptualisations of high-quality professional caregiving relationships.
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All parties involved in health care, including patients and their families/caregivers play a significant role to achieve patient safety. Furthermore, patient engagement (PE) has not been adequately implemented to achieve safe healthcare in Indonesia, despite the introduction of the patient-centered care paradigm. This study aims to explore healthcare professionals' (HCPs) perspectives on PE and its application technique. A qualitative study was conducted in the chronic wards of a faith-based private hospital in Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia. Four focus group discussions among 46 HCPs, followed by 16 in-depth interviews, were carried out. Furthermore, the verbatim transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. The result showed four main themes, including PE as a strategy for achieving safe healthcare, factors affecting its implementation, the need for comprehensive strategies to engage the patients, and their roles in safety efforts. Furthermore, the implementation of PE can be enhanced by encouraging healthcare professionals (HCPs) to play proactive roles in empowering recipients. To achieve PE, "partnership culture" and the removal of potential barriers as well as determining factors, must be established. This requires a high-level commitment, organizational support with a top-down approach, and integration into healthcare systems. In conclusion, PE is essential for patient safety and can be enhanced by strengthening organization support, integrating into the healthcare system, improving HCPs' roles, and empowering patients and caregivers to overcome potential barriers.
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Background: Health-care communication is essential for amiable provider-recipient relationship. This study explored various health-care experiences and expectations of service recipients and providers in private clinical establishments of West Bengal, India, while breaking difficult news, bad news, and death. Aim: The current study was framed with the following research question: What are the varying perceptions, experiences, and expectations of healthcare recipients and their providers while seeking/delivering support in situations of breaking bad news and communications on death? Materials and Methods: The data were collected through individual in-depth interviews-31 respondents that included 16 patients and their families (recipient) and 15 medical practitioners (provider). Inductive thematic analysis was used. Results: Three main themes and nine sub-themes were identified highlighting livid experiences and perceptions of respondents. The findings suggest that interpersonal communications involve language barriers, health literacy and COVID-19 pandemic, situations of sudden unexplained death, perceptual negativity surrounding healthcare, empathy as well as emotions and multiple affiliations leading to ethical moral conflicts to influence individual perception. Regarding treatment attributes, factors of inaccessibility misconceived as incompetence and waiting and contact time are involved. The behavior and personality dimensions include attitude and robustness of the patient party and capability to handle emotions that affect provider-recipient relationship during communications of bad news and death. Conclusion: This study provided a local perspective about the experiences and expectations of healthcare recipients and their providers. Understanding this critical realm shall help in bridging the gap between recipient expectations and provider practices. It will also attempt towards possible alignment to improve patient satisfaction.