Why should parents and health professionals collaborate to manage childhood long-term conditions?

Introduction: Interactions between carers and health professionals often have a power imbalance; professionals seem reluctant to acknowledge carers’ expertise and unwilling to relinquish control over the management of the child’s condition.
Aim: To explore parents’ and professionals’ perceptions of collaborative healthcare practice
to manage childhood long-term conditions.
Methods: Qualitative study using focus groups to elicit carers’ and health professionals’ views of collaborative practice, with the framework approach underpinning data analysis.
Discussion: To facilitate parents’ care-giving roles, health professionals must move from a position of care prescriber to collaborator. Yet collaboration is complex and difficult to operationalise in practice, partly because there is discordance between the views of health professionals and carers about the purpose of collaborating.
Conclusion: Health professionals need to understand, value and respect carers’ expertise and desire to be involved in care and find ways to integrate carer expertise into care and care planning.