Identification of the palliative phase in people with dementia: a variety of opinions between healthcare professionals
Publication year
2015Source
BMC Palliative Care, 14, 1, (2015), pp. 56ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

Display more detailsDisplay less details
Organization
Anesthesiology
Primary and Community Care
IQ Healthcare
Journal title
BMC Palliative Care
Volume
vol. 14
Issue
iss. 1
Page start
p. 56
Subject
Radboudumc 18: Healthcare improvement science RIHS: Radboud Institute for Health Sciences; Radboudumc 1: Alzheimer`s disease DCMN: Donders Center for Medical NeuroscienceAbstract
BACKGROUND: People with dementia can benefit from a palliative care approach. Recommendations, such as those of the EAPC have been proposed to strengthen the provision of palliative care for this group of patients. Yet, it remains challenging for professionals to identify when a person with dementia is in need of palliative care. The objective of this study therefore was to explore when professionals in long-term care settings consider a person with dementia in need of palliative care. METHODS: Teams with in total 84 professionals working in 13 long-term care settings from 6 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland and the Netherlands) received a case-vignette concerning a person with dementia recently admitted to a nursing home. Teams were asked to discuss when they considered people with dementia eligible for palliative care. The constant comparative method was used to analyse their answers. RESULTS: Three different time points in the disease trajectory when people with dementia were considered to be eligible for palliative care were extracted: (1) early in the disease trajectory; (2) when signs and symptoms of advanced dementia are present; and (3) from the time point that curative treatment of co-morbidities is futile. Yet, none of these time points was uniformly considered by the professional teams across Europe. In some cases, professionals working in the same nursing home didn't even reach consensus when considering persons with dementia eligible for palliative care. CONCLUSION: The results of the study identified that professionals across Europe have different opinions regarding the time point when to consider a person with dementia in need of palliative care.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [202606]
- Electronic publications [100803]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [79948]
- Open Access publications [69538]
Upload full text
Use your RU credentials (u/z-number and password) to log in with SURFconext to upload a file for processing by the repository team.