Individual and Systemic Barriers Blocking Community Health Workers from Helping the Seriously Ill

Abstract

Background:

Palliative care is a valuable component of health care that improves a patient's quality of life, yet its availability to patients with serious chronic illness remains relatively low. Due to their knowledge of community preferences and ability to improve patient education and access to care, community health workers (CHWs) can increase palliative care usage by patients. Notably, barriers to CHWs helping patients with serious chronic illness remain poorly understood.

Objective:

Explore the perception of barriers CHWs feel they face when attempting to support the health care of patients with serious chronic illness.

Design:

Qualitative semistructured individual interviews of CHWs and qualitative descriptive analysis.

Setting/Subjects:

Twelve CHWs who have worked with patients with serious chronic illness were recruited from the Johns Hopkins Healthcare LLC and the Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare organizations to virtually participate.

Results:

CHWs perceived both active and passive barriers that obstructed their efforts to work with seriously ill patients. CHWs shared that these barriers were dependent on themselves, their peers, and their work environments. Prevalent themes included interprofessional conflict, poor health care worker understanding of the CHW's role, and lack of access to quality resource organizations. CHWs noted job-specific training, better means to identify needed resources for patients, and inclusive health care teams as solutions to support their professional goals, while helping patients with serious illness.

Conclusions:

There are multiple perceived barriers to CHWs helping seriously ill patients. CHWs aiding patients with serious illness can be supported through better job training, better resource management tools, and improved communication between health care team members.