What, how and from whom do health care professionals learn during collaboration in palliative home care: a cross-sectional study in primary palliative care.
BACKGROUND
Palliative care often requires inter-professional collaboration, offering opportunities to learn from each other. General practitioners often collaborate with specialized palliative home care teams. This study seeks to identify what, how and from whom health care professionals learn during this collaboration.


METHODS
Cross-sectional survey in Belgium. All palliative home care teams were invited to participate. General practitioners (n = 267) and palliative care nurses (n = 73) filled in questionnaires.


RESULTS
General practitioners (GPs) and palliative care nurses learned on all palliative care aspects. Different learning activities were used. Participants learned from all others involved in patient care. The professionals' discipline influences the content, the way of learning and who learns from whom. Multiple linear regression shows significant but limited association of gender with amount of learning by GPs (M < F; p = 0.042; Adj R2 = 0.07) and nurses (M > F; p = 0.019; Adj R2 = 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
This study is the first to reveal what, how and from whom learning occurs during collaboration in palliative care. Training professionals in sharing expertise during practice and in detecting and adequately responding to others' learning needs, could optimize this way of learning.
Peter
P
Pype
Wim
W
Peersman
Johan
J
Wens
Ann
A
Stes
Bart
B
Van den Eynden
Myriam
M
Deveugele
D000328:Adult; D001530:Belgium; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D058005:General Practitioners / Q000193:education*; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D019555:Physician-Nurse Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires