“I don’t see the whole picture of their health”: a critical ethnography of constraints to interprofessional collaboration in end-of-life conversations in primary care

CONTEXT: Interprofessional collaboration is recommended in caring for frail older adults in primary care, yet little is known about how interprofessional teams approach end-of-life (EOL) conversations with these patients. OBJECTIVE: To understand the factors shaping nurses’ and allied health clinicians’ involvement, or lack of involvement in EOL conversations in the primary care of frail older adults. METHODS/SETTING: A critical ethnography of a large interprofessional urban Family Health Team in Ontario, Canada. Data production included observations of clinicians in their day-to-day activities excluding direct patient care; one-to-one semi-structured interviews with clinicians; and document review. Analysis involved coding data using an interprofessional collaboration framework as well as an analysis of the normative logics influencing practice. PARTICIPANTS: Interprofessional clinicians (n = 20) who cared for mildly to severely frail patients (Clinical Frailty Scale) at the Family Health Team. RESULTS: Findings suggest primary care nurses and allied health clinicians have the knowledge, skills, and inclination to engage frail older adults in EOL conversations. However, the culture of the clinic prioritizes biomedical care, and normalizes nurses and allied health clinicians providing episodic task-based care, which limits the possibility for these clinicians’ engagement in EOL conversations. The barriers to nurses’ and allied health clinicians’ involvement in EOL conversations are rooted in neoliberal-biomedical ideologies that shapes the way primary care is governed and practiced. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings help to explain why taking an individual-level approach to addressing the challenge of delayed or avoided EOL conversations, is unlikely to result in practice change. Instead, primary care teams can work to critique and redevelop quality indicators and funding models in ways that promote meaningful interprofessional practice that recognize the expertise of nursing and allied health clinicians in providing high quality primary care to frail older patients, including EOL conversations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-023-02171-w.