Abstract

CONTEXT: Earlier and more frequent serious illness conversations with patients allow clinical teams to better align care with patients' goals and values. Non-physician clinicians often have unique perspectives and understanding of patients' wishes and are thus well-positioned to support conversations with seriously ill patients. The Team-based Serious Illness Care Program (SICP) at Stanford aimed to involve all care team members to support and conduct serious illness conversations with patients and their caregivers and families.OBJECTIVES: We conducted interviews with clinicians to understand how care teams implement team-based approaches to conduct serious illness conversations and navigate resulting team complexity.METHODS: We used a rapid qualitative approach to analyze semi-structured interviews of clinician and administrative stakeholders in two Team-based SICP implementation groups (i.e., inpatient oncology and hospital medicine) (n=25). Analysis was informed by frameworks/theory: cross-disciplinary role agreement, team formation and functioning, and organizational theory.RESULTS: Implementing Team-based SICP was feasible. Theme 1 centered on how teams formed and managed to come to agreement: teams with rapidly changing staffing/responsibilities prioritized communication, whereas teams with consistent staffing/responsibilities primarily relied on protocols. Theme 2 demonstrated that leaders and managers at multiple levels could support implementation. Theme 3 explored strengths and opportunities. Positively, Team-based SICP distributed work burden, timed conversations in alignment with patient needs, and added unique value from non-physician team members. Role ambiguity and conflict were attributed to miscommunication and ethical conflicts.CONCLUSION: Team-based serious illness communication is viable and valuable, with a range of successful workflow and leadership approaches.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2023.01.024

View details for PubMedID 36764413