TY - JOUR T1 - Acceptability of the palliative dyspnoea protocol by emergency clinicians JF - BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care JO - BMJ Support Palliat Care DO - 10.1136/spcare-2022-003959 SP - spcare-2022-003959 AU - Thidathit Prachanukool AU - Korawit Kanjana AU - Rachel Somin Lee AU - Mohammad Adrian Hasdianda AU - Attakorn Raksasataya AU - Kalpana N Shankar AU - Maura Kennedy AU - Shan Woo Liu AU - Kei Ouchi Y1 - 2022/09/16 UR - http://spcare.bmj.com/content/early/2022/09/15/spcare-2022-003959.abstract N2 - Dyspnea is the subjective experience of breathing discomfort and affects the quality of life in patients with serious, life-limiting illness.1 2 Dyspnoea is also one of the most distressing symptoms that necessitates visits to the emergency department (ED) in the last six months of life, and it is increasingly ranked the highest in the last two weeks of life.1 In addition to disease-oriented treatments, an adjunct opioid-based treatment for palliation of dyspnoea improves quality of life and functions significantly in patients with advanced respiratory illnesses.1 2 Despite the strong clinical evidence and many national organisations recommending the use of systemic opioids (grade 1B) as an adjunct therapy for relieving dyspnoea in patients with advanced terminal illnesses and refractory dyspnoea at the end of life,2 the utilisation by emergency clinicians is unknown. This study aims to determine the acceptability of this protocol by emergency clinicians and to gain information to improve the protocol implementation.Due to the pressing need to relieve dyspnea with COVID-19, the palliative symptom management experts in our institution reviewed the current evidence and designed the protocol for acute dyspnoea in the ED, which provided the recommended prescription for all patients who experience any severity of dyspnoea (online supplemental file 1). This study took place in the ED of an academic medical centre. The participants included attending physicians, resident physicians and physician assistants, who provided initial care for patients with moderate to severe dyspnoea in the ED. This included … ER -