Palliative care needs assessment tool

The delivery of appropriate and equitable care is a challenge facing many areas of health care, including palliative care. Not all patients for whom death is expected will need specialist palliative care, but for those who do, non-referral, late referral or crisis referral may affect adversely the quality of care they receive near the end of life. Whilst issues surrounding when and how palliative care should be delivered, and to whom, are yet to be resolved, needs assessment is fundamental to delivering needs-based care. The majority of published needs assessment tools have been developed for oncology patients, with validation and other psychometric testing largely being reported for this population; with fewer tools available for other patient groups. In routine clinical practice, brief tools may be more feasible to administer, particularly in settings with heavy patient throughput or for patients for whom longer measures may be too burdensome. However, health care providers may find the more comprehensive information attained from follow-up administration of longer, more intensive tools to be of assistance in guiding their palliative care. Implementing needs assessment tools as part of routine care can facilitate the right care being offered to people at the time they most need it, by the people or service which is most appropriate to meet identified needs. Integration of needs assessment into an overall needs-based model of palliative care, which includes training for health professionals to address identified needs, will have the greatest likelihood of positive impacts on patients, carers and health system outcomes.5th ed