Collaboration Between Health Professionals in the Era of Antiretroviral Therapy

After antiretroviral therapy (ART) became available in South Africa, persons living with HIV (PLWH) began to survive, but they often experienced disability as a result of their illness and treatments. Management of HIV is more often successful with a holistic approach including medicine, rehabilitation, and social care. There is limited literature on collaborations between nurses and allied health professionals in the rehabilitation of PLWH, with no documentation of partnerships between nurses and physiotherapists in high–HIV burdened countries. We investigated the collaboration between nurses and physiotherapists in the rehabilitation of PLWH. We conducted two focus groups with experienced nurses at two residential facilities for PLWH in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, using Van Manen’s pedagogy on interpretive phenomenology as the conceptual framework. Three barriers to collaboration were found: role governance, environmental structure, and organizational variance. Education and in-service programs and workshops were suggested to curb the divide.