Anthony James Goodings, Sten Kajitani, Mila Pastrak, Elaine Cunningham, Hannah O'Brien, Catherine Weadick, Karie Dennehy
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Abstract
Background: The early integration of a specialist palliative care team is demonstrated to have numerous benefits for patients. These extend beyond end-of-life care to include reducing depressive symptoms, improving quality of life and reducing unnecessary interventions.
Aims: This study aims to characterise the patient population referred to the specialist palliative care service with a diagnosis of gynaecological cancer. It also assesses referral frequency and response time in order to understand palliative care utilisation in an acute hospital setting.
Methods: A retrospective chart review and database analysis were performed to extract data on demographics, cancer diagnoses and referral reasons for patients referred to the specialist palliative care service over 3 years. The study focuses on identifying patterns in the characteristics of the referred patient population.
Results: Analysis of 162 patients revealed a distribution across cancer subtypes: 62% ovarian, 22% endometrial, 12% cervical and 4% vulvar. A notable finding was that the outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer were more likely to be discharged home with or without community care (62%) compared with those with endometrial cancer (41%). A rapid response to referrals was observed, with 70% reviewed within 3 days and 98% within a week. This highlights the service's efficiency and the demographic and diagnostic profile of the patient served.
Conclusions: This study gives insight into the demographic and diagnostic profiles of patients with gynaecological cancer referred for palliative care, alongside demonstrating rapid response to such referrals. Despite the rapid assessment times, the research importantly identifies differences in outcomes among different cancer subtypes, with a particular emphasis on the variance in discharge destinations. These findings reflect both patient preferences and medical needs, demonstrating the role of tailoring palliative care approaches to meet the individual needs and desires of this diverse patient population.
期刊介绍：
Published quarterly in print and continuously online, BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care aims to connect many disciplines and specialties throughout the world by providing high quality, clinically relevant research, reviews, comment, information and news of international importance.
We hold an inclusive view of supportive and palliative care research and we are able to call on expertise to critique the whole range of methodologies within the subject, including those working in transitional research, clinical trials, epidemiology, behavioural sciences, ethics and health service research. Articles with relevance to clinical practice and clinical service development will be considered for publication.
In an international context, many different categories of clinician and healthcare workers do clinical work associated with palliative medicine, specialist or generalist palliative care, supportive care, psychosocial-oncology and end of life care. We wish to engage many specialties, not only those traditionally associated with supportive and palliative care. We hope to extend the readership to doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers and researchers in medical and surgical specialties, including but not limited to cardiology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, paediatrics, primary care, psychiatry, psychology, renal medicine, respiratory medicine.
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