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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Which terminally ill cancer patients receive hospice in-patient care? | | Author(s) | Julia Addington-Hall, Dan Altmann, Mark McCarthy |
| Journal title | Social Science and Medicine, vol 46, no 8, 1998 |
| Pages | pp 1011-1016 |
| Keywords | Cancer ; Terminal care ; Admission. |
| Annotation | Results of secondary analysis of data from the Regional Study of Care for the Dying (RSCD) are used to investigate how cancer patients who receive in-patient care differ from those who do not in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics, site of cancer, symptom experience and dependency levels in the last year of life. Five factors were found to independently predict hospital in-patient care: having pain in the last year of life; having constipation; being dependent on others for help with activities of daily living (ADLs) between one and six months before death; having breast cancer; and being under age 85. A third of patients with all five factors were admitted, compared with no patients with some of these factors. It was found that symptom severity, age, dependency level, and site of cancer played a role in determining hospice admission but have limited predictive value. Admission seems to be governed more by chance than by need. Further research is needed to identify which patients benefit more from in-patient care in hospices and other specialist palliative care units as the present arrangements appear to be both inequitable and insupportable. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010105007 A |
| Classmark | CK: LV: QKH * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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