In the last decades, the number of people living with chronic diseases had increased, mainly due to the aging of the population. Such chronic, progressive, life threatening and burdening diseases, play an important role in this new era of palliative care. Despite the growing scientific and social interest in palliative care, there is still a delay in the identification of patients with palliative care needs. This leads to a late integration in a palliative care network and consequent deprivation of the major advantages of an early and progressive integration. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of palliative care training and the use of a structured tool, in the identification of the elderly population in need of palliative care by family physicians. And also to conduct a prevalence study to further the knowledge about how many elder people in primary care have the need of a palliative care approach.
The study consists of two phases: 1. Randomized trial with General Practitioners (GP) to determine the role of two different training programs and a structured tool in the identification of geriatric patients with palliative care needs. 2. Cross-sectional, analytical study of the prevalence and patterns of geriatric patients with Palliative Care (PC) needs, managed in primary care in Portugal's Center Healthcare Administrative Region.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SCREENING
Masking
NONE
Intervention will consist on providing different types of palliative care training to identify the most accurate on improving GPs' identification of palliative care patients skills
Center Healthcare Administrative Region
Coimbra, Portugal
GPs' rate of identification of patients with palliative care needs
Each GP will have to identify, before each intervention, from a set of fictitious clinical cases constructed for this purpose, which patients need palliative care. After each intervention, they will re-evaluate the same clinical cases and will be asked to identify again which patients need palliative care. Each intervention will be measured according to the identification accuracy.
Time frame: 2 weeks
Prevalence geriatric patients with palliative care needs
Number (% of patients) of geriatric patients, managed in primary care in Center Healthcare Administrative Region, with palliative care needs.
Time frame: 6 months
Sociodemographic characteristics of geriatric patients with palliative care needs
Age (in years), sex (male or female), marital status (single, married, divorced, widow, marriage) and job of geriatric patients, managed in primary care in Center Healthcare Administrative Region, with palliative care needs.
Time frame: 6 months
Clinical characteristics of geriatric patients with palliative care need
Main diseases, main symptoms, number of contacts with GP/year of geriatric patients, managed in primary care in Center Healthcare Administrative Region, with palliative care needs.
Time frame: 6 months
Complexity of geriatric patients with palliative care need
Complexity of of geriatric patients, managed in primary care in Center Healthcare Administrative Region, with palliative care needs, evaluated using ICD-Pal tool
Time frame: 6 months
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