“Standing Shoulder to Shoulder to Tell the Family What Was Really Going On”: A Qualitative Study Exploring Palliative Care Clinicians' Perceptions of “Patient-Centered Family Meetings”

Abstract

Background:

Family meetings are often conducted in palliative care, but there is no universal agreed or accepted model. A new model of Patient-Centered Family Meetings is proposed whereby the patient sets the agenda.

Aim:

To seek palliative care clinicians' perceptions and experiences of Patient-Centered Family Meetings (“Meetings”) and their acceptability and feasibility in the inpatient specialist palliative care setting.

Design:

A qualitative study used semistructured interviews. Theoretical and procedural direction was taken from grounded theory with thematic content analysis using the constant comparative method.

Setting/Participants:

Interviews were conducted with clinicians (n = 10) at the intervention site who had participated in a Meeting.

Results:

Four themes were identified: (1) a patient-set agenda gives patients a “voice”; (2) a patient-set agenda and the Meeting model enhances clinicians' understanding of patients and families; (3) the Meeting model was perceived to be acceptable; and (4) the Meeting model was perceived to be only feasible for selected patients.

Conclusion:

Clinicians perceived that a patient-set meeting agenda with defined questions enhanced their knowledge of the patient's issues and their understanding of the patient and their family's needs. The patients' most important issues often differed from the clinicians' expectations of what might be important to individual patients. There were contrasting views about the acceptability and feasibility of these Meetings as standard practice due to clinician time constraints and the Meeting not being required or relevant to all patients. Given the perceived benefits, the identification of patients and families who would most benefit is an important research priority.