Featured Review: Hospital-based specialist palliative care for adults with a terminal illness

How effective is hospital-based specialist palliative care for adults with a terminal illness and their unpaid caregivers, and is it cost-effective?Why is this question important? Palliative care aims to improve the quality of life of people who have a terminal illness (a disease that cannot be cured and is likely to lead to death). It seeks to help patients, their unpaid caregivers and families manage symptoms that cause distress (for example, pain) and to meet patients’ and unpaid caregivers’ needs for psychological, social and spiritual support. Palliative care is known as an ‘holistic’ approach, because it considers the ‘whole’ person and their support network – not just the illness and its symptoms. It usually involves a team of people that can incl ude physicians, nurses, pharmacists, other allied health professionals, social workers, chaplains or volunteers.A growing number of hospitals are setting up specialist palliative care services (known as hospital-based specialist palliative care (HSPC)). HSPC can be provided:either in the hospital itself – for inpatients or outpatients;or as ' hospital-at-home ' – which means that the hospital team visits patients in the community;or across multiple settings (for example, hospital and home).To find out whether HSPC benefits patients and their unpaid caregivers, and how cost-effective it is, the author team reviewed the evidence from research.How did the authors identify and evaluate the evidence?First, they ...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news