Exploring Internal Conflicts and Collaboration of a Hospital Home Healthcare Team: A Grounded Theory Approach

Abstract

An aging society is on the rise, leading to a variety of caregiving issues. The Taiwanese government has been implementing a home healthcare integration plan since 2015, aimed at integrating and forming interdisciplinary care teams with medical institutions. This study explores the internal conflict factors among hospital home healthcare team members at a district teaching hospital in Taichung, Taiwan, and it seeks a better collaboration model between them. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with seven hospital home healthcare team members. Data analysis was based on grounded theory, with research quality relying on the triangulation and consistency analysis methods. The results show that “work overload”, “resource overuse”, “inconsistent assessment”, “limited resources”, “communication cost”, and “lack of incentives” are the major conflicts among the team. This study proposed the following collaboration model, including “identifying the internal stakeholders of a home healthcare team” and “the key stakeholders as referral coordinators”, “patient-centered resource allocation”, and “teamwork orientation”. The study recommends that within a teamwork-oriented home healthcare team, its members should proactively demonstrate their role responsibilities and actively provide support to one another. Only through patient-centered resource allocation and mutual respect can the goal of seamless home healthcare be achieved. The content of the research and samples were approved by the hospital ethics committee (REC108-18).