What does it take to deliver brilliant home-based palliative care? Using Positive Organisational Scholarship and Video Reflexive Ethnography to explore the complexities of palliative care at home

SAGE Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Dr Ann Dadich (Western Sydney University, Austrailia) Specialist home-based palliative care can improve symptom management and quality of life and prevent hospitalisation at the end-of-life. There is significant variation in how home-based palliative care is delivered, even within similar jurisdictions. The clinical practices and contextual factors that enable exemplary palliative care are not well understood. The study identified some of the characteristics that enable brilliant home-based palliative care – notably: anticipatory aptitude and action; a weave of commitment among different individuals, within and beyond a palliative care service; flexible adaptability; and team capacity-building. Using the combined methodology of positive organisational scholarship in healthcare and video-reflexive ethnography, this study also revealed the importance of context in delivering brilliant home-based palliative care. The aforesaid conditions can be adapted for use within other services, particularly those committed to brilliant palliative care. Despite the contributions of this study, policies are required to guide and sustain brilliant home-based palliative care across different settings. Full paper available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269216318807835

If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara Nwosu: [e-mail]