Centre for Policy on Ageing



The level of need for palliative care — a systematic review of the literature
Author(s)	Peter J Franks, Chris Salisbury, Nick Bosanquet
Journal title	Palliative Medicine, vol 14, 2000
Pages	pp 93-104
Keywords	Pain ; Terminal care ; Literature reviews.
Annotation	Palliative care services have developed rapidly over the last 30 years, with little evaluation as to how needs have been met by these new services. This literature view has found 64 articles providing evidence on the need for palliative care services over the period 1978 to 1997, with a further 9 more recent articles. Need can be assessed in one of two ways: either by adopting an epidemiological approach, or by examining health service usage. In the former, evidence is provided on disease-specific mortality, and related to the duration of symptoms prior to the patient's death. For the latter, estimates might be made of numbers of cases and of the specialised manpower required. Studies indicate that at present usage, palliative care is being provided by 40-50 hospice beds per million population. Despite this provision, there remains evidence that in certain areas of care such as pain control, there still remains a high degree of unmet need. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-010227228 A
Classmark	CT7: LV: 64A *
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.