Doctors and nurses experience the emotional impact of providing palliative care as great. It is intensive and demands a lot from the healthcare professional. At the same time, providing palliative care is very satisfying. You become more aware of what is important in life and often it leads to personal growth. This was stated by healthcare professionals who shared their experiences of providing palliative care for the research of Anne-Floor Dijxhoorn and colleagues. The results of this study support the importance of a broad approach in focusing on the emotional impact of palliative care.
Eleven doctors and ten nurses working in home care, nursing homes and hospitals took part in the interview study by Dijxhoorn et al. They included both generalists and palliative care specialists. It emerged from the interviews that there are several aspects of palliative care that influence the emotional impact. Some of these aspects are supportive, while others undermine the emotional well-being of healthcare professionals. These positive and negative aspects do not seem to balance each other out, like two elements on a scale, but rather to be present simultaneously in the healthcare professionals.
Self-care important on an individual level
Moreover, the supporting and undermining factors for emotional well-being can be found at the individual level as well as at the team and organizational level. Supporting factors mentioned at the individual level were an accepting attitude towards death as part of life and the practice of self-care. Conflicting values between the patient and the caregiver and inexperience with loss and dying were experienced as hindering factors.
Importance of role models in the team
At the level of the care provider’s team, a supportive team culture was experienced as helpful. For example, having other colleagues as role models and a culture in which people felt safe to talk about the emotional impact of work. In addition, it was emotionally impactful for palliative care specialists when they worked in a team with only colleagues who had no experience in providing palliative care, as a result of which they themselves experienced a great sense of responsibility.
Facilitate peer support at organizational level
Healthcare professionals indicated that the organization can support them in coping with the emotional impact by offering peer support. Undermining factors at the organizational level were the high workload and the complexity of providing palliative care.
I hope that by drawing attention to this topic, we can normalize that there is talk, especially among health care providers, about the impact that the work has on them personally. We should not make it a problem, but it is important as a healthcare provider to be aware of the emotional impact and that attention is paid to this impact on an individual, team and organizational level. This can be done by giving time, creating a safe team culture and offering a listening ear. – Dijx horn
More attention for interventions at all levels
The results of this study support the importance of a broad approach in addressing the emotional impact of palliative care delivery. Previous literature research shows that most interventions aimed at preventing burnout among healthcare professionals in palliative care focused on the individual healthcare provider.1 Only one intervention focused on the team as a whole. Recently, more and more attention has been paid to the importance of supporting healthcare professionals in dealing with the impact of palliative care at individual, team and organizational level. In October 2022, the research team will start an intervention study into the use of Peer Support in the Leiden University Medical Center.
- Dijxhoorn AFQ, Brom L, van der Linden YM, et al. Prevalence of burnout in healthcare professionals providing palliative care and the effect of interventions to reduce symptoms. A systematic literature review. Palliative Medicine 2022.