Background Developments in digital health have the potential to transform the delivery of health and social care by creating new opportunities for healthcare professionals to deliver care. For example, during the COVID19 pandemic, palliative care services have used digital health to support communication with staff, patients and caregivers. However, there is limited data on staff perspectives of using digital health for communication during the pandemic, which limits our ability to learn how digital health tools can be used beyond the pandemic to support palliative care communication in clinical practice.

Method(s) We developed an electronic questionnaire (requiring multiple choice and free text responses), for UK based palliative care healthcare professionals, to identify how they have used digital health to support communication in clinical care during the COVID19 pandemic. We circulated the questionnaire through professional networks and through social media. The questions involved: (1) communication within the multidisciplinary team (MDT), (2) education and (3) to support communication with patients and carers. We used thematic analysis to analyse free text responses and identify themes.

Results Two hundred and thirty-four palliative care professionals participated. Most (n= 227, 97%) had increased their use of digital health, to support communication, since the pandemic started. We identified benefits and challenges for digital health communication, which we summarised into themes to identify facilitators and barriers for future use of this technology in clinical practice.

Conclusion(s) Since the pandemic, palliative care professionals described increased use of digital health to support communication. We have identified facilitators and barriers for future practice. We believe that should work should identify support to enable organisations to implement the models of care needed to improve access and quality of palliative care services.

References

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2. Bone AE, Gomes B, Etkind SN, et al. What is the impact of population ageing on the future provision of end-of-life care? Population-based projections of place of death. Palliative Medicine 2017;32(2):329–36. doi: 10.1177/0269216317734435