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- Title
Out-of-hours specialist palliative care provision in an oncology centre: is it worthwhile?
- Authors
Kendall, Clare; Jeffrey, David
- Abstract
Specialist palliative care provision out of hours to date has been debated with reference to primary care. However, in the majority of hospitals in Great Britain there is no access to 24-hour specialist palliative care. It is the responsibility of every health care professional to practice the palliative care approach and to call specialist palliative care colleagues if the need arises, as an integral component of good clinical practice, whatever the illness or it's stage. The Manual of Cancer Services Standards recommends that there should be specialist palliative care team (SPCT) members to provide advice for the cancer centre, hospital or hospice on a 24-hour basis. SPCT documented situations where there was concern about leaving a patient for 72 hours without review. A record was kept of messages left on the palliative care voicemail requesting advice out of hours. The hospital switchboard recorded requests from other wards in the hospital or from primary care teams wanting specialist palliative care advice out of hours.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; PALLIATIVE treatment; PRIMARY care; CANCER patients; HOSPITALS
- Publication
Palliative Medicine, 2003, Vol 17, Issue 5, p461
- ISSN
0269-2163
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1191/0269216303pm770sr