Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Early specialised palliative care: interventions, symptoms, problems

Abstract

Background Few studies have investigated the content of interventions provided in early specialised palliative care (SPC).

Objectives To characterise the content of interventions delivered in early SPC in the Danish Palliative Care Trial (DanPaCT), a multicentre trial with six participating sites.

Methods A retrospective qualitative and quantitative study coding all new interventions initiated by the palliative teams and documented in the medical records during the 8-week study period of DanPaCT. Interventions were categorised according to (a) symptom/problem prompting the intervention, (b) type of intervention and (c) professional(s) providing the intervention.

Results In total, 145 patients were randomised to the SPC teams. According to the medical records, patients received a median of 3.5 (range 0–22) new interventions in the 8-week intervention-period from the palliative teams. For 24 (18%) of the patients there was no documented interventions in the medical records. The most frequent symptom/problems treated were pain, (100 interventions; 20% of interventions given) and impaired physical function (62; 13% of interventions given). The most frequent type of intervention was pharmacological (232; 42% of interventions given).

Conclusions This is one of the first studies to meticulously investigate the content of interventions documented in the medical records for patients receiving early SPC. Diverse symptoms were treated with many different interventions. However, a relatively low number of interventions were documented. This may explain the lack of effect in DanPaCT but also questions whether all interventions were adequately documented

Trial registration number NCT01348048

  • cancer
  • drug administration
  • pain
  • pharmacology
  • service evaluation
  • symptoms and symptom management

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request and if it is in accordance with Danish law. If so, the dataset can be made available if requested from the second or last author (ATJ (atjohnsen@health.sdu.dk) and MG (mold@sund.ku.dk)).

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.