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BackgroundFor GPs to implement early palliative care, the first step is to identify patients with palliative care needs. The surprise question (SQ) is a screening tool that aims to aid this identification; for example, a response of 'no' to the SQ — 'Would you be surprised if this patient would die within a year?' — would suggest palliative care may be needed.AimTo describe setting-specific screening results of patients eligible for early palliative care in family practices, which is defined as patients aged ≥45 years with GPs' responses of 'no' to the SQ.Design & settingA secondary analysis was undertaken using a cross-sectional descriptive study in family practices in five areas in Belgium.MethodGPs were recruited by targeted sampling. As a first part of an implementation research project, participating GPs provided demographic information about themselves and also provided a response to the SQ for all patients who came to the practice in 10 consecutive office days. A summary table describing the sex, age, location of contact (GP surgeries, patients' homes, or nursing homes) of the patients was provided by each GP.ResultsFifty-six GPs provided complete data for the practice summary tables. In total, 9150 patients were described (all ages, all settings), of which 506 patients (6%) had a GP response of 'no' to the SQ. The distribution of SQ-no-as-answer patients per setting was: 152/7659 (2%) patients seen in family practice surgeries; 139/998 (14%) patients seen in their homes; and 215/493 (44%) patients seen in nursing homes.ConclusionThere was a large number of patients with SQ-no-as-answer, with possible palliative care needs. To enhance implementation of early palliative care, future research should compare results of SQ and other screening tools with palliative care symptoms assessments.

Background To deliver optimal palliative care, a Care Pathway for Primary Palliative Care (CPPPC) was developed. This CPPPC was implemented by general practitioners (GPs) in territories of five Belgian palliative care networks (2014–2016). Belgian doctors have much therapeutic freedom, and do not commonly follow guidelines. Objectives To assess how palliative care was provided by GPs before the CPPPC and its implementation project were presented publicly. Methods Between 2013 and 2015, seven focus groups with GPs were conducted. Participants included 15 GPs in three French-speaking focus groups and 26 GPs in four Dutch-speaking focus groups, with diversity for age, gender, palliative care experience and practice context. Some GPs implemented the CPPPC later. Results GPs considered each palliative care case unique and disliked strict protocols. However, they expressed a need for peer review and reflective frameworks. GPs felt it is important to identify palliative care patients ‘timely’, but found this difficult. Screening methods help, but are not widely used. GPs struggled most with identifying palliative care needs in non-oncological patients. Bad news breaking was considered difficult. Continuity of care was considered very important. However, advance care planning seemed more widely practised by Dutch-speaking GPs than by French-speaking GPs. The taboo of palliative care provoked emotional discussions. Conclusion Palliative care frameworks which help GPs to deliver ‘tailor-made’ care have more chance to be adopted than strict protocols. GPs should be given education for bad news breaking. Palliative care and advance care planning practices differ locally: guideline dissemination plans should respect these local differences.

Background: Palliative care requires a multidisciplinary care team. General practitioners often ask specialised palliative home care teams for support. Working with specialised nurses offers learning opportunities, also called workplace learning. This can be enhanced by the presence of a learning facilitator. Objectives: To describe the development and evaluation of a training programme for nurses in primary care. The programme aimed to prepare palliative home care team nurses to act as facilitators for general practitioners’ workplace learning. Design: A one-group post-test only design (quantitative) and semi-structured interviews (qualitative) were used. Methods: A multifaceted train-the-trainer programme was designed. Evaluation was done through assignments with individual feedback, summative assessment through videotaped encounters with simulation-physicians and individual interviews after a period of practice implementation. Results: A total of 35 nurses followed the programme. The overall satisfaction was high. Homework assignments interfered with the practice workload but showed to be fundamental in translating theory into practice. Median score on the summative assessment was 7 out of 14 with range 1–13. Interviews revealed some aspects of the training (e.g. incident analysis) to be too difficult for implementation or to be in conflict with personal preferences (focus on patient care instead of facilitating general practitioners’ learning). Conclusion: Training palliative home care team nurses as facilitator of general practitioners’ workplace learning is a feasible but complex intervention. Personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships and contextual variables have to be taken into account. Training expert palliative care nurses to facilitate general practitioners’ workplace learning requires careful and individualised mentoring.

International audience; The number of people in their last years of life with advanced chronic conditions, palliative care needs, and limited life prognosis due to different causes including multi-morbidity, organ failure, frailty, dementia, and cancer is rising. Such people represent more than 1% of the population. They are present in all care settings, cause around 75% of mortality, and may account for up to one-third of total national health system spend. The response to their needs is usually late and largely based around institutional palliative care focused on cancer. There is a great need to identify these patients and integrate an early palliative approach according to their individual needs in all settings, as suggested by the World Health Organization. Several tools have recently been developed in different European regions to identify patients with chronic conditions who might benefit from palliative care. Similarly, several models of integrated palliative care have been developed, some with a public health approach to promote access to all in need. We describe the characteristics of these initiatives and suggest how to develop a comprehensive and integrated palliative approach in primary and hospital care and to design public health and community-oriented practices to assess and respond to the needs in the whole population. Additionally, we report ethical challenges and prognostic issues raised and emphasize the need for research to test the various tools and models to generate evidence about the benefits of these approaches to patients, their families, and to the health system. (C) 2016 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background: Working and learning go hand in hand during interprofessional collaborative practice. Patients' nursing records are designed to record patient care and health status. It is not known whether these records are also used to keep track of interprofessional contacts or interprofessional learning between team members. This study explored the usefulness of patients' nursing records in optimising interprofessional workplace learning for general practitioners. Methods: We utilized a descriptive retrospective chart review. All palliative home care teams of the Dutch speaking part of Belgium were involved. Throughout the year 2010, a representative sample of patient charts was selected. Characteristics of encounters between general practitioners and palliative care nurses were extracted from the charts. Results: Detailed accounts of interprofessional contacts were found in the charts. Palliative care nurses recorded number and type of contacts, topics discussed during contacts and general practitioner's learning activities. Discussion: Palliative care nurses are sensitive and open towards the general practitioners' learning needs. Patients' nursing records provide useful information for interprofessional team discussions on workplace learning. Healthcare professionals should be trained to respond to each other's learning needs.

Background There is a growing need for palliative care. The majority of palliative patients prefer their general practitioner (GP) to organize their palliative home care. General practitioners need a range of competences to perform this task. However, there has been nogeneral description so far of how GPs keep these competences up-to-date. The present study explores current experiences, views and preferences towards training and education in palliative care among GPs, palliative home-care professionals and professionals from organizations who provide training and education. Methods Five focus groups were brought together in Belgium, with a total of 29 participants, including members of the three categories mentioned above. They were analysed using a constant comparison method. Results The analysis revealed that undergraduate education and continuing medical education (CME) while in practice, is insufficient to prepare GPs for their palliative work. Workplace learning (WPL) through collaboration with specialized palliative home-care nurses seems to be a valuable alternative. Conclusions The effectiveness of undergraduate education might be enhanced by adding practical experience. Providers of continuing medical education should look to organize interactive, practice-based and interprofessional sessions. Therefore, teachers need to be trained to run small group discussions. In order to optimize workplace learning, health care professionals should be trained to monitor each other's practice and to provide effective feedback. Further research is needed to clarify which aspects of interprofessional teamwork (e.g. professional hierarchy, agreements on tasks and responsibilities) influence the effectiveness of workplace learning.

Background Palliative care often requires inter-professional collaboration, offering opportunities to learn from each other. General practitioners often collaborate with specialized palliative home care teams. This study seeks to identify what, how and from whom health care professionals learn during this collaboration. Methods Cross-sectional survey in Belgium. All palliative home care teams were invited to participate. General practitioners (n = 267) and palliative care nurses (n = 73) filled in questionnaires. Results General practitioners (GPs) and palliative care nurses learned on all palliative care aspects. Different learning activities were used. Participants learned from all others involved in patient care. The professionals’ discipline influences the content, the way of learning and who learns from whom. Multiple linear regression shows significant but limited association of gender with amount of learning by GPs (M F; p = 0.019; Adj R2 = 0.01). Conclusions This study is the first to reveal what, how and from whom learning occurs during collaboration in palliative care. Training professionals in sharing expertise during practice and in detecting and adequately responding to others’ learning needs, could optimize this way of learning. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-014-0501-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The effects of loperamide oxide 1 mg and 2 mg were compared with placebo and with loperamide 2 mg in 261 patients with acute, nonspecific diarrhea. Time to first relief and time to complete relief of diarrhea were statistically significantly shorter in the three active drug groups than in the placebo group. Compared with placebo, neither dosage of loperamide oxide produced a period of posttreatment constipation. Adverse experiences were (nonsignificantly) less frequent for loperamide oxide 1 mg and 2 mg than for either placebo or loperamide 2 mg. These results suggest that loperamide oxide 1 mg is as efficacious as loperamide 2 mg for the treatment of patients with acute, nonspecific diarrhea. Because of its low potential for causing constipating effects and adverse experiences, loperamide oxide 1 mg may be preferred over either loperamide oxide 2 mg or loperamide 2 mg.

The article discusses a survey on postgraduate education on palliative care in Belgium in 2007 and the structure for assessment of activities under continuing medical education (CME). The article highlights that the education available to general practitioners (GPs) for improving their palliative care competences does not have centrally managed content or quality. It also mentions the lack of assessment of CME activities, and offers suggestions on how to improve existing CME programs.

Introduction Ill persons from ethnical minorities are not cared for optimally in our healthcare system. Intercultural mediation aims to improve the accessibility and the quality of care for ethnical minorities. Due to the aging of the first generation of migrants, more and more migrants in Flanders will face an growing need for palliative care. Migrants elderly and palliative services are still rather unknown to each other. So it is not unthinkable that the intercultural mediator can play a significant role when in the future undoubtedly the number of migrant patients with palliative care needs will increase. While in the past interventions of intercultural mediators occurred rather on general wards, they now more often face palliative care. Research question What could be the role of intercultural mediation in providing palliative care in a multicultural society? Research Method This study used a qualitative descriptive method from a phenomenological research perspective where for the thematic analysis the coding paradigm of grounded theory was used. Results Although a palliative care process must always be considered as an individual process, there are nevertheless many cultural differences. Both intercultural mediators and palliative care providers have less experience in guiding and supporting an intercultural palliative care process. The cooperation that currently exists, is considered as positive, although there are still many points waiting for improvement. Conclusion The framework supporting intercultural mediators in guiding a palliative care process, is currently inadequate. This aspect should be paid for more attention in the near future.

Starting with early identification of palliative care patients by general practitioners (GPs), the Care Pathway for Primary Palliative Care (CPPPC) is believed to help primary health care workers to deliver patient- and family-centered care in the last year of life. The care pathway has been pilot-tested, and will now be implemented in 5 Belgian regions: 2 Dutch-speaking regions, 2 French-speaking regions and the bilingual capital region of Brussels. The overall aim of the CPPPC is to provide better quality of primary palliative care, and in the end to reduce the hospital death rate. The aim of this article is to describe the quantitative design and innovative data collection strategy used in the evaluation of this complex intervention. A quasi-experimental stepped wedge cluster design is set up with the 5 regions being 5 non-randomized clusters. The primary outcome is reduced hospital death rate per GPs’ patient population. Secondary outcomes are increased death at home and health care consumption patterns suggesting high quality palliative care. Per research cluster, GPs will be recruited via convenience sampling. These GPs -volunteering to be involved will recruit people with reduced life expectancy and their informal care givers. Health care consumption data in the last year of life, available for all deceased people having lived in the research clusters in the study period, will be used for comparison between patient populations of participating GPs and patient populations of non-participating GPs. Description of baseline characteristics of participating GPs and patients and monitoring of the level of involvement by GPs, patients and informal care givers will happen through regular, privacy-secured web-surveys. Web-survey data and health consumption data are linked in a secure way, respecting Belgian privacy laws. To evaluate this complex intervention, a quasi-experimental stepped wedge cluster design has been set up. Context characteristics and involvement level of participants are important parameters in evaluating complex interventions. It is possible to securely link survey data with health consumption data. By appealing to IT solutions we hope to be able to partly reduce respondent burden, a known problem in palliative care research. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02266069 .