Information needs of cancer patients on referral to palliative care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A semi-structured interview study to explore the information needs of cancer patients on referral to palliative care
IRAS ID
204482
Contact name
Lucy Ziegler
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 0 days
Research summary
Early access to palliative care can improve symptoms, reduce acute hospital admissions, minimize aggressive cancer treatments and enable patients to make choices about their end of life care. There is evidence however that patients in the UK and in particular Leeds are not receiving timely referral. Barriers to earlier integration have been identified as: health professional; patient; or service level barriers. Leeds is particularly well provisioned in terms of specialist palliative care services and benefits from two hospices, and a comprehensive hospital based team which together provide 7 day a week clinical services within Leeds. The availability and accessibility of services is therefore unlikely to be a factor. Much of the research exploring barriers to palliative care focuses on the perceptions of health professionals but research detailing patients' perspectives is more limited. The aim of this study is to interview patients before and after referral to palliative care to explore their perceptions of palliative care and to determine what information would be helpful to support them with integration to palliative care. This study builds on the work of two existing projects: IMPACCT (RP-PG-0610-10114) and Time4PallCare (YCR L384).
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/NW/0394
Date of REC Opinion
25 May 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion