Palliative care for patients with cancer: do patients receive the care they consider important? A survey study - PubMed Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Apr 17;17(1):61.
doi: 10.1186/s12904-018-0315-3.

Palliative care for patients with cancer: do patients receive the care they consider important? A survey study

Marianne Heins  1 , Jolien Hofstede  2 , Mieke Rijken  2 , Joke Korevaar  2 , Gé Donker  2 , Anneke Francke  2   3   4
Affiliations

Palliative care for patients with cancer: do patients receive the care they consider important? A survey study

Marianne Heins et al. BMC Palliat Care. .

Abstract

Background: In many countries, GPs and home care nurses are involved in care for patients with advanced cancer. Given the varied and complex needs of these patients, providing satisfactory care is a major challenge for them. We therefore aimed to study which aspects of care patients, GPs and home care nurses consider important and whether patients receive these aspects.

Methods: Seventy-two Dutch patients with advanced cancer, 87 GPs and 26 home care nurses rated the importance of support when experiencing symptoms, respect for patients' autonomy and information provision. Patients also rated whether they received these aspects. Questionnaires were based on the CQ index palliative care.

Results: Almost all patients rated information provision and respect for their autonomy as important. The majority also rated support when suffering from specific symptoms as important, especially support when in pain. In general, patients received the care they considered important. However, 49% of those who considered it important to receive support when suffering from fatigue and 23% of those who wanted to receive information on the expected course of their illness did not receive this or only did so sometimes.

Conclusion: For most patients with advanced cancer, the palliative care that they receive matches what they consider important. Support for patients experiencing fatigue may need more attention. When symptoms are difficult to control, GPs and nurses may still provide emotional support and practical advice. Furthermore, we recommend that GPs discuss patients' need for information about the expected course of their illness.

Keywords: Home care services; Neoplasms; Palliative care; Primary health care; Quality of care.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was carried out according to the precepts of the Helsinki Declaration, Dutch legislation on privacy and the regulations of the Dutch Data Protection Authority. Patients, GPs and home care nurses gave written informed consent before study participation. The study protocol was reviewed by the Medical Ethics Committee of the VU Medical Centre and they concluded that, according to Dutch legislation, approval by a Medical Ethics Committee was not obligatory for this study.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Perceived importance of aspects of support when having a specific symptom as rated by patients
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Importance of aspects of respect for autonomy and information provision as rated by patients, GPs and home care nurses
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Received aspects of care rated by patients who find these aspects important*. * patients who rated an aspect as not important were not included
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Australian Institute of H, Welfare Cancer survival and prevalence in Australia: period estimates from 1982 to 2010. Asia Pac J Clin Oncol. 2013;9:29–39. doi: 10.1111/ajco.12062. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baili P, Di Salvo F, Marcos-Gragera R, Siesling S, Mallone S, Santaquilani M, Micheli A, Lillini R, Francisci S, Group E-W Age and case mix-standardised survival for all cancer patients in Europe 1999-2007: results of EUROCARE-5, a population-based study. Eur J Cancer. 2015;51(15):2120–2129. doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2015.07.025. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2016. CA Cancer J Clin. 2016;66:7–30. doi: 10.3322/caac.21332. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Siesling S, Visser O, Luth TK, Karim-Kos HE, van de Poll-Franse LV, Aben KK, Damhuis RA. Adult cancer patients are surviving longer in the Netherlands: 5-year survival rate increased by 12% between the periods 1989-1993 and 2004-2008. Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2011;155:A3169. - PubMed
    1. Billingham MJ, Billingham SJ. Congruence between preferred and actual place of death according to the presence of malignant or non-malignant disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2013;3:144–154. doi: 10.1136/bmjspcare-2012-000292. - DOI - PubMed