The SIAM-PC is designed to reliably measure the multiple dimensions of patients' needs for palliative care, and then to provide information to clinicians, patients, and the patients' families to achieve optimal patient care, while improving our capacity for doing palliative care research.
However, few studies have been conducted to date on GPs' recognition of their patients' need for palliative care [ 6].
GPs reported differences in how they identified a need for palliative care in cancer patients versus those with other diseases.
Symptom response (pain and dyspnoea) was significantly better in the docetaxel treated patients with less use of opiate analgesics (P<0.001) and less need for palliative radiotherapy (P<0.01).
Furthermore, reduced costs may be related to a reduced use of other palliative treatment modalities (ascites drainage, palliative surgery) and less need for palliative care in a hospital or other institutional setting, or at home.
Participants were asked about: experience with palliative care provision (1 question); community descriptions (3 questions); community health and health care priorities and challenges (2 questions); community need for palliative care and existing availability (10 questions); and the SPCH approach (6 questions).
However, the studies did not include all patients in the intervention, reasons for exclusion were medical instability [ 18, 22, 23], need for specialized care [ 17, 19, 22, 24], living in nursing homes [ 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28], small survival chance or need for palliative care [ 18, 22, 23, 25, 28], and being diagnosed with an illness causing functional impairment [ 18, 23, 28].
An increased need for palliative care has been acknowledged world-wide.
Recent studies highlight the need for palliative care (PC) in the management of ILD patients.
The study results suggest the need for palliative care educational programmes designed to help nurses to understand the impact of cultural background within the palliative care context.
