Utilisation of after-hours telephone support in a home-based hospice service.

Background: After-hours support from hospice providers is instrumental to patients with serious illness who choose to remain at home, particularly at end of life. Utilisation of out-of-hours support has been much characterised in terms of frequency and nature of calls, but more needs to be known to inform service customisation and resource allocation to optimise care. To this end, we stratify reasons for using the after-hours helpline according to time sensitivity, and to explore disease and person factors associated with urgent calls.

Who needs and continues to need paediatric palliative care? An evaluation of utility and feasibility of the Paediatric Palliative Screening scale (PaPaS).

Background: While the populations of children who can benefit from paediatric palliative care (PPC) have been broadly defined, identifying individual patients to receive PPC has been problematic in practice. The Paediatric Palliative Screening scale (PaPaS) is a multi-dimensional tool that assesses palliative care needs in children and families to facilitate timely referrals. This study evaluates its use to manage new referrals and ongoing review of patients receiving home-based PPC in Singapore.