Care for the Dying: A Scoping Review of Measures for Clinical Practice With Qualitative Synthesis.

Abstract

The literature describes a plethora of different measures to support healthcare professionals in the care for the dying. The aim is the identification and assessment of measures for the care in the dying phase to give healthcare professionals of all disciplines an overview on such measures in form of a self-developed toolkit. Two databases were searched systematically and all measures found (n = 7368 publications, n = 308 measures) were categorized into six categories and integrated into a toolkit. Descriptive statistics and qualitative synthesis were used to report the findings. 50.6% of the measures were applied in studies with moderate level of evidence and 23.4% were concerned with hospital care. Most measures were related to symptom relief. Measures from high quality studies are lacking and most measures were applied in palliative care specialists settings. The developed toolkit can serve as a resource for healthcare professionals to guide and stimulate healthcare professionals' clinical practice.