Background Health is a holistic phenomenon, yet healthcare often falls short of this ideal due to economic and political pressures. The declared overarching goal of general practice is to provide holistic care, yet in daily practice, GPs face significant challenges due to workload pressures. As a result, certain aspects of patient suffering—particularly those related to existential concerns—remain insufficiently addressed. To help bridge this gap, we initiated an action research project that brought together two traditional and locally connected professional groups: the Parish Ministers (PMs) and General Practitioners (GPs). This article presents data from interviews with GPs and PMs, which we conducted after the first two years of an interdisciplinary network project.Design The intervention was designed as a participatory design, action research project.Method We analyzed the data using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a hermeneutic and phenomenological method that allowed us to explore the personal and professional experiences of participants during the first two years of interdisciplinary network.Results The action research project introduced an interdisciplinary network that enhanced existential support for patients, which in turn supported GPs in their patientcare. The data consists of 12 interviews conducted in November and December 2023 with Parish Ministers (PMs) and six interviews with General Practitioners (GPs) in Kolding, a Southern Region in Denmark. The network was perceived as a resource in daily practice and provided the GPs with valuable support in patient care as well as fertilized reflections that sharpened the professional practice for both GPs and PMs.Conclusions PMs and GPs perceived an interdisciplinary local network to enhance existential patient care and GPs felt supported in their clinic. Based on these results, the next step is to test the intervention in other parts of Denmark to assess its effectiveness beyond this region.
Vesterdal et al. (Tue,) studied this question.