Tools for Practice

Description:

Palliative and End-of-Life Care: A Cancer System Performance Report provides data and insights from Canadian patients with cancer and their caregivers on experiences with palliative care. Data suggest patients with cancer who die in acute-care hospitals do not always receive inpatient palliative care early in their illness. Over 66 per cent received inpatient palliative care only during their last hospitalization before death, which can be too late for patients to experience the full benefits of this type of physical and emotional support.
Palliative and End-of-Life Care reinforces the benefits of having community-based services available so patients are not needlessly hospitalized at the end of their lives. The report also looks at the need for more research and better data to develop meaningful ways to measure the quality and timeliness of palliative care in Canada.