Authors (including presenting author) :
Kwan WM Cecilia(1), Cheng SY(2)
Affiliation :
(1) Bradbury Hospice (2) Palliative care Unit , North District Hospital
Introduction :
A structured and revised model of Palliative Day Care Service was introduced to NDH since August 2020. This is a one-stop multidisciplinary palliative care day service provided for patients with advanced progressive diseases. Patients would receive symptoms management, palliative rehabilitation program, psycho-spiritual support, care givers training according to their needs. Despite having the impact of COVID-19, the effectiveness of the service had been evaluated via measuring patient outcomes.
Objectives :
Examined the effectiveness of palliative care support to patients and their families .
Methodology :
This is a prospective study, using the palliative care specific measurement tool, Support Team Assessment Schedule (STAS), to measure the patients’ symptoms, psycho-spiritual and family aspects with 5-points Likert Scale. The evaluation period started from 1 May 2022 to 31 July 2022. All new cases joining the Palliative Day Care during this period were recruited. Measurements were performed by the Day Care nurses on Day 1 as baseline and the third week and eighth week of attendance for comparison. Paired T test using SPSS v28 was used for data analysis.
Result & Outcome :
There were 59 new recruits and 28 were able to complete the 3 assessment during the study period. It was found that there was significant improvement in pain (SD, 0.758; p 0.000), fatigue (SD, 0.617, p, 0.001), patient anxiety (SD, 0.599; p, 0.001) and family anxiety (SD, 0.650, p, 0.005) on the 8th week after joining the Palliative Day Care program. In addition, the functional performance of these patients were slightly deteriorating as reflected in the lowering Palliative Performance Scale scores. This may suggest that the Palliative Care Day Service is effective in improving patients’ general physical and psychological well being even their general conditions are progressively on downhill.
