Background: Patients with advanced chronic non-malignant conditions often experience significant symptom burden. Therefore, overcoming barriers to interprofessional collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and specialist palliative home care (SPHC) teams is essential to facilitate the timely integration of palliative care elements. The KOPAL trial aimed to examine the impact of case conferences between GPs and SPHC teams on symptom burden and pain in patients with advanced chronic heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and dementia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Chronic, non-malignant diseases (CNMD) like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF) and dementia in advanced stages are very burdensome for patients. Timely palliative care with strong collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and specialist palliative home care (SPHC) teams can reduce symptom burden, hospitalization rates, hospitalization costs and overall healthcare costs. The KOPAL-study on strengthening interprofessional collaboration for patients with palliative care needs tested the effect of an intervention comprising of a SPHC nurse assessment and an interprofessional case conference.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Chronic non-malignant diseases (CNMDs) are under-represented in specialist palliative home care (SPHC). The timely integration of SPHC for patients suffering from these diseases can reduce hospitalisation and alleviate symptom burdens. An intervention of an SPHC nurse-patient consultation followed by an interprofessional telephone case conference with the general practitioner (GP) was tested in the KOPAL trial ('Concept for strengthening interprofessional collaboration for patients with palliative care needs').
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and dementia are underrepresented in specialist palliative home care (SPHC). However, the complexity of their conditions requires collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and SPHC teams and timely integration into SPHC to effectively meet their needs.
Objective: To facilitate joint palliative care planning and the timely transfer of patients with advanced chronic non-malignant conditions to SPHC.