ReviewPalliative medicine2026
How and in what circumstances does facilitation work for residential aged care staff in the implementation of palliative care interventions? A realist review.
Review in Palliative medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe challenges of implementing evidence-based palliative care in residential aged care are widely acknowledged. Facilitation is often cited as an effective implementation strategy to address these challenges. However, there is limited guidance on how this strategy applies specifically to this context.
aimTo understand the contextual factors and causal processes (mechanisms) that influence the facilitation of interventions designed to improve palliative care in residential aged care, and to develop a realist programme theory that explains how best to support their implementation.
designRealist review guided by the RAMESES standards. Protocol is registered on PROSPERO (CRD42023447043). DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE, CINAHL and PsycINFO databases were searched for studies on palliative care interventions in residential aged care that used facilitation, published between 2000 and 2024. Data extraction and synthesis followed realist principles to identify context-mechanism-outcome configurations.
resultsTwenty-three articles describing 16 palliative care interventions were included in the review. Facilitation was found to be effective when it fostered a shared understanding of the intervention, tailored its components to fit staff workflow and built trust among stakeholders. These processes contributed to normalisation of the intervention and transition of ownership of both the intervention and facilitation process. Proactive support from the facilitator in addition to action learning was most effective at developing learning systems and staff comfort and confidence.
conclusionsThe realist programme theory developed in this study provides a foundation for ongoing testing and refinement, with the aim of accelerating evidence uptake by residential aged care staff and ultimately improving palliative care outcomes for residents.
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