Primary care palliative and supportive care services: Experiences and perceptions of patients with advanced progressive disease and their informal carers

Hardy, Beth (2009) Primary care palliative and supportive care services: Experiences and perceptions of patients with advanced progressive disease and their informal carers. In: University of Huddersfield Research Festival, 23rd March - 2nd April 2009, University of Huddersfield. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Palliative care can be defined as the active, holistic care of patients with advanced progressive illness, and incorporates symptom management with psychological, social and spiri-tual care (WHO, 1990). Palliative care is for patients in the advanced stages of illness.
Supportive care follows people throughout the process of their disease, from pre-diagnosis, treatment, cure, continuing illness, death and into bereavement. The aim of supportive care is to maximise benefits of treatment and help people to live as well as possible with a disease (NCHSPCS, 2002).
The majority of palliative/supportive care is delivered in pri-mary care, and up to 90% of people spend most of their last year of life at home (Aoun et al, 2005).
Palliative services were initially only available for cancer suf-ferers, however recent policy proclaims that palliative and supportive care services should be available to all, regard-less of diagnosis (DoH, 2008) and a plethora of services now exist to meet these needs.
This research will take a interpretive phenomenological meth-odology to explore the experience of receiving these services from the perspectives of patients and their informal carers,

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