Primary care multidisciplinary teams in practice: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Current recommendations for strengthening the US healthcare system consider restructuring primary care into multidisciplinary teams as vital to improving quality and efficiency. Yet, approaches to the selection of team designs remain unclear. This project describes current primary care team designs, primary care professionals' perceptions of ideal team designs, and perceived facilitating factors and barriers to implementing ideal team-based care. METHODS: Qualitative study of 44 health care professionals at 6 primary care practices in North Carolina using focus group discussions and surveys. Data was analyzed using framework content analysis. RESULTS: Practices used a variety of multidisciplinary team designs with the specific design being influenced by the social and policy context in which practices were embedded. Practices overwhelmingly located barriers to adopting ideal multidisciplinary teams as being outside of their individual practices and outside of their control. Participants viewed internal organizational contexts as the major facilitators of multidisciplinary primary care teams. The majority of practices described their ideal team design as including a social worker to meet the needs of socially complex patients. CONCLUSIONS: Primary care multidisciplinary team designs vary across practices, shaped in part by contextual factors perceived as barriers outside of the practices' control. Facilitating factors within practices provide a culture of support to team members, but they are insufficient to overcome the perceived barriers. The common desire to add social workers to care teams reflects practices' struggles to meet the complex demands of patients and external agencies. Government or organizational policies should avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to multidisciplinary care teams, and instead allow primary care practices to adapt to their specific contextual circumstances.

The assistant medical officer in Sri Lanka: mid-level health worker in decline.

The history of Assistant Medical Officers (AMOs) in Sri Lanka can be traced back to the 1860s. Their training from the beginning followed an allopathic, 'evidence based' model. AMOs have played a key role in rural and peripheral health care, through staffing of government central dispensaries and maternity homes and may have contributed to Sri Lanka's favorable health outcomes. While there are currently approximately 2000 AMOs, their training course was discontinued in 1995. It was argued that the quality of care provided by the AMOs is substandard relative to that of physicians. The success, rapid expansion and integration of physician assistant programs into the US health care system have recently spurred other countries to introduce similar programs. This paper reviews Sri Lanka's move in the opposite direction, phasing out the AMO profession, without any research into their contributions to access to interprofessional primary health care and positive health outcomes.

Access to care: beyond health insurance.

Access to healthcare is derived from a complex mix of personal beliefs, cultural norms, and social structure, combined with available individual and community resources. This article reviews the concept of access to care and its evolution since the 1960s. The difference between potential and realized access and the question of social justice as it relates to access to care also are explored.

Physician assistants and nurse practitioners: a missing component in state workforce assessments.

Due to current or predicted health workforce shortages, policy makers worldwide are addressing issues of task allocation, skill mix, and role substitution. This article presents an example of this process in the United States (US). Health workforce analysts recommend that US physician workforce planning account for the impact of physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs). We examined 40 state workforce assessments in order to identify best practices for including PAs/NPs. Most assessments (about 60%) did not include PAs/NPs in provider counts, workforce projections or recommendations. Only 35% enumerated PAs/NPs. Best practices included use of an accurate data source, such as state licensing data, and combined workforce planning for PAs, NPs, and physicians. Our findings suggest that interprofessional medical workforce planning is not the norm among the states in the US. The best practices that we identify may be instructive to states as they develop methods for assessing workforce adequacy. Our discussion of potential barriers to interprofessional workforce planning may be useful to policy makers worldwide as they confront issues related to professional boundaries and interprofessional workforce planning.

Nonpharmacological Self-Management of Migraine Across Social Locations: An Equity-Oriented, Qualitative Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Migraine is a disabling neurological disorder and the sixth biggest cause of disability worldwide. The World Health Organization has declared migraine a major public health problem due to a paucity of knowledge about cause and effective treatment options. Both in incidence and severity, migraine disproportionately affects people occupying marginalized social locations (SL). Managed pharmacologically, migraine is treated with daily preventive and as-needed abortive medications. Both come with high literal and figurative costs: intolerable side effects, medication interactions, and prohibitive prices. Cost prohibitive, ineffective, and unsustainable pharmacological treatment options have contributed to high levels of interest in complementary approaches by people with migraine, but little is known about their motivations, patterns of use or access, or how these may vary by SL. METHOD: We conducted focus groups with 30 people with migraine to explore their desires and recommendations for migraine clinicians and researchers. We used qualitative content analysis to identify themes.Outcomes: We identified 4 themes: a more holistic, collaborative, long-term treatment approach; medication as a short-term solution; high personal and economic costs of medication; and desire for more information and access to natural approaches. Across SL, participants expressed keen interest in integrative approaches and wanted better access to complementary modalities. Participants in marginalized SL described reliance on traditional/folk remedies, including engagement with family and community healers, who they described as more affordable and culturally accessible. CONCLUSIONS: Holistic and integrative approaches were preferred over medication as long-term migraine management strategies. However, people in marginalized SL, while disproportionately disabled by migraine, did not feel as comfortable accessing integrative approaches through currently available channels. Engaging with these communities and using a critical lens to explore barriers to access can develop options to make complementary modalities more approachable, while also attending to systemic blind spots that may unintentionally alienate socially marginalized groups.

Preceptors' Perceptions of Interprofessional Practice, Student Interactions, and Strategies for Interprofessional Education in Clinical Settings.

PURPOSE: This study describes clinical preceptors' perceptions of interprofessional practice, the nature and variety of physician assistant (PA) students' interprofessional interactions during clinical training, and factors that facilitate or hinder interprofessional education (IPE) in clinical settings. METHODS: This qualitative study involved interviews with preceptors that were audio-recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed through an iterative process to identify key conceptual themes. RESULTS: Fourteen preceptors from a variety of clinical settings participated. Four themes were identified: (1) preceptors define interprofessional practice differently; (2) students learn about teams by being a part of teams; (3) preceptors separate students to avoid diluting learning experiences; and (4) preceptors can facilitate IPE by introducing students to members of the team and role modeling team skills. CONCLUSIONS: The themes may inform PA educators' efforts to increase IPE in clinical settings through educational interventions with both preceptors and students.