Inpatient palliative care consultation: describing patient satisfaction.

Objective: This study identified and measured common patterns of patients' positive care experiences during inpatient palliative consultation, and helped better understand how the journey of discovery experienced by both patients and life-care consult teams can be used to improve the quality of care.

Methods: We administered questionnaires to a convenience sample of 25 patients who were referred to inpatient palliative care for a goals-of-treatment consult between April 2010 and May 2012.

Results: The codified responses to questionnaires revealed the perspectives of our patients rather than predicting outcomes.