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Where do general practitioners find patients with possible palliative care needs?

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

Background: For general practitioners (GPs) to implement early palliative care, the first step is to identify patients with palliative care needs, e.g. with a no-response to the Surprise Question (SQ) (not surprised if a patient would die within a year). Aim: To describe setting-specific screening results of patients eligible for early palliative care in family practices, here defined as patients aged 45 years with a GPs’ no-answer to the SQ. Design and setting: Secondary analysis. Cross-sectional descriptive study in family practices in 5 Belgian areas. Methods: GPs 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 ten consecutive office days. A summary table describing the gender, age, location of contact (surgery, patient’s home, or nursing home) of the patients was provided by each GP. Results: 56 GPs provided complete data for the practice summary tables. In total 9,150 patients were described (all ages, all settings), of which 506 patients (6%) had a SQ-no-as-answer. 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 innursing homes. Conclusions: There was quite a large number of SQ-no-as-answer patients, 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.
Journal: BJGP Open
ISSN: 2398-3795
Volume: 99
Publication year:2021
Keywords:A1 Journal article
Accessibility:Open