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Our results reveal that burnout and psychological morbidity are significant in the palliative care community and demonstrate a need to look at managing long working hours and promoting the use of coping mechanisms to reduce burnout and psychological morbidity.

Background: The American College of Emergency Physicians has identified early palliative care referral for patients with advanced cancer as a key competent of the Choosing Wisely campaign. Objectives: To study the feasibility of a new 3-way model of care between emergency department (ED), hospital palliative care department, and inpatient/home hospice. Methods: This was a prospective, descriptive study that included oncology patients who attended the hospital ED over a 3-year period from January 2015 to December 2017. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) presence of metastatic cancer with either; (2) any 1 of the following symptoms: pain, dyspnea, nausea and vomiting, delirium, or swelling; or (3) potential care difficulties (requiring home hospice care or inpatient hospice). Results: A total of 340 patients were referred from the ED. Mean age was 72 years, 59% were males and 41% females, and the majority (88%) were Chinese. The most common cancers were lung 89 (26%), colorectal 71 (21%), and hepatobiliary cancer 49 (14%). The most common symptoms on Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale scoring were pain (34%), poor appetite (31%), and dyspnea (26%). Conclusions: This tripartite model of palliative care, hospice, and ED collaboration allows earlier access to palliative care in the ED and direct admissions to the palliative care unit and comfort care rooms. The ED patients who did not need admission were also attended to in the palliative care "Hot Clinics" within a week with home hospice help. Patients who required inpatient hospice care were directly admitted there from the ED.

ObjectivesWe established an integrated palliative homecare programme for advanced dementia. This study explores patients’ symptoms and quality-of-life and their association with enteral feeding, evaluates the impact of the programme on these parameters and examines familial caregiver burden.MethodsThis is a prospective cohort study. Patients at Functional Assessment Stage 7, with an albumin level <35 g/L, pneumonia or enteral feeding were recruited. At baseline and regular intervals, the multidisciplinary homecare team used the Pain Assessment in Advanced Dementia, Mini Nutritional Assessment and Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q) to identify patients’ symptoms, and the Quality of Life in Late-Stage Dementia (QUALID) tool to assess quality-of-life as primary outcomes, stratified by feeding status. The Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) investigated caregiver burden, stratified by living arrangement and availability of stay-in help. Mann-Whitney U and χ2 tests compared continuous and categorical variables respectively between groups while Wilcoxon signed-rank test compared assessment scores at baseline and on review.ResultsAt baseline, 49.2% of the 254 patients had pain, 92.5% were malnourished and 85.0% experienced neuropsychiatric challenges. Patients on enteral feeding had lower NPI-Q score (median=3; IQR 1–6) than orally fed patients ((median=4; IQR 2–7), p=0.004) and higher QUALID score (median=25; IQR 21–30 vs median=21; IQR 17–25 for orally fed patients), p<0.0001, indicating a better quality-of-life for orally fed patients. Both symptoms and quality-of-life improved significantly for the 53 patients reviewed at the fifth month. Median ZBI score for caregivers was 26 (IQR 15–36). Having stay-in help reduced it from 39.5 (IQR 25–49) to 25 (IQR 15–35), p=0.001.ConclusionAn integrated multidisciplinary palliative homecare team with geriatric training that is accessible all-hours addressed the needs of home-dwelling patients with advanced dementia, improved their quality-of-life and supported families to care for them at home.

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