Bridging the gap between healthcare sectors: Facilitating the transition from NICU to the municipality and home for families with premature infants

Abstract
Purpose: The transition from hospital to home can be challenging for parents of
prematurely born infants. The aim of this ethnographic study was to describe a
multidisciplinary and cross‐sectoral discharge conference for families with premature
infants transitioning from a neonatal intensive care unit to municipal
healthcare services.

Design and Methods: An ethnographically/anthropologically inspired qualitative
design was adopted. We conducted four participant observations of multidisciplinary
and cross‐sectoral discharge conferences and 12 semistructured interviews with
four neonatologists, four nurses, and four health visitors who had attended one of
the conferences. Salient themes were generated by two‐part analysis consisting of a
thematic analysis followed by Turner's ritual analysis.

Results: This study illustrated how multidisciplinary and cross‐sectoral discharge
conferences improved the quality of care for premature infants and their families in
their transition process which was perceived as complex. These conferences
contributed to promoting a sense of coherence and continuity of care. The
healthcare professionals experienced that this event may be characterized as a ritual,
which created structures that promoted cross‐sectoral cooperation and communication
while increasing interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. Thus, the conferences
triggered a sense that the participants were building bridges to unite healthcare
sectors, ensuring a holistic and coordinated approach to meet the unique needs of
the infants and their families.

Implications for Practice: This study presented a unique holistic and family‐centered
approach to constructing multidisciplinary and cross‐sectoral discharge conferences
that seemed to underpin the quality of interdisciplinary and health‐related
knowledge sharing and establish a crucial starting point for early interventions,
preventive measures, and health‐promoting efforts. Hopefully, our findings will
encourage others to rethink the discharge conference as a transitional ritual that may potentially bridge the gap between healthcare sectors. Specifically, our findings
contribute to the mounting body of knowledge of family‐centered care by showing
how healthcare professionals may—in a meaningful and tangible manner—operate,
develop, and implement this somewhat elusive theoretical foundation in their clinical
practice.