Introduction: A patient with a life threatening disease has many physical, psychosocial and spiritual needs. Relieving these needs asks a broad range of skills exceeding the expertise of one single caregiver. So co-operation is necessary.
Methodology: The research question is: how is this co-operation in Flanders? For this descriptive exploring study a post inquiry was sent to different professionals in Antwerp and Limburg (n=600).
Results: There was a response of 33.3%. 90% of caregivers use the WHO definition for palliative care. For the implementation of this definition most of them are using pathways and participate in educational programmes. Questions about content or organisation are asked to doctors, nurses and palliative care networks. Pain is the most important patient related concern. Anxiety and the ability to bear of the entourage are the second and third focus of attention for palliative care. Answers on questions about cooperation are suggesting that care at night, psychosocial support, overburden of family and information exchange between professional caregivers should have priority in order to find solutions. The respondents like to cooperate more intensively with general practitioner, palliative care unit, social worker and nurse. According to the respondents the problem of palliative care during the night requires solutions at a macro -, meso-and microlevel. For the psychosocial support they want more education and threshold debasement. For reducing the overburden of the family the building and extension of networks are suggested; for the problems of the exchange of information between caregivers team discussions and briefings are proposed.
Conclusion: These results agree with the outcome of a dutch study. The idea arose to conceive instruments intending to implement different connections in an interregional programme in order to resolve most of the patient-related bottle-necks.