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Early identification of and proactive palliative care for patients in general practice, incentive and methods of a randomized controlled trial.
- Source :
-
BMC family practice [BMC Fam Pract] 2011 Nov 03; Vol. 12, pp. 123. Date of Electronic Publication: 2011 Nov 03. - Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Background: According to the Word Health Organization, patients who can benefit from palliative care should be identified earlier to enable proactive palliative care. Up to now, this is not common practice and has hardly been addressed in scientific literature. Still, palliative care is limited to the terminal phase and restricted to patients with cancer. Therefore, we trained general practitioners (GPs) in identifying palliative patients in an earlier phase of their disease trajectory and in delivering structured proactive palliative care. The aim of our study is to determine if this training, in combination with consulting an expert in palliative care regarding each palliative patient's tailored care plan, can improve different aspects of the quality of the remaining life of patients with severe chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and cancer.<br />Methods/design: A two-armed randomized controlled trial was performed. As outcome variables we studied: place of death, number of hospital admissions and number of GP out of hours contacts.<br />Discussion: We expect that this study will increase the number of identified palliative care patients and improve different aspects of quality of palliative care. This is of importance to improve palliative care for patients with COPD, CHF and cancer and their informal caregivers, and to empower the GP. The study protocol is described and possible strengths and weaknesses and possible consequences have been outlined.<br />Trial Registration: The Netherlands National Trial Register: NTR2815.
- Subjects :
- Female
General Practice
General Practitioners standards
Heart Failure psychology
Heart Failure therapy
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Neoplasms psychology
Neoplasms therapy
Netherlands
Pain Measurement methods
Pain Measurement standards
Palliative Care organization & administration
Palliative Care standards
Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive psychology
Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive therapy
Severity of Illness Index
Time Factors
Caregivers psychology
General Practitioners education
Palliative Care methods
Quality of Life
Terminally Ill psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1471-2296
- Volume :
- 12
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- BMC family practice
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 22050863
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-12-123