Despite the provision of the policy for Ward-based Primary Healthcare Outreach Teams, which requires home-based care workers to be supported by different categories of health professionals, home-based care workers continue to experience challenges during service provision in the communities. Home-based care workers form an integral part of the Ward-based Primary Healthcare Outreach Teams that form part of the streams of primary healthcare re-engineering. The aim of the study was to explore and describe the experiences of home-based care workers (HBCWs) when rendering services in the communities of Northern Tshwane district in Gauteng province and Madibeng district in the North West province.
The study design was qualitative, exploratory and descriptive. Purposive sampling was used from the population of HBCWs in Gauteng and North West. Focus group interviews were conducted. Tesch’s data analysis method was used. Themes and subthemes were identified by the researcher and co-coder, and these were summarised into subjects that were interrelated.