Evaluation of the Patient Consultations for Admission to Palliative Care: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

Introduction: It is essential to comply with palliative care philosophy during consultations for hospitalisation purposes between specific medical branches and specialised palliative care services (SPCS). We aimed to evaluate the patients who were admitted or consulted to the palliative care service with a palliative care approach. Materials and Method: This descriptive study is based on retrospective review of data. The consultation requests delivered to the SPCS between December 1, 2019 and December 1, 2020 were evaluated through the hospital archive. The number of consultation requests delivered to the SPCS from other departments for hospitalisation purposes, demographic characteristics of patients, their acceptance and rejection rates, and reasons for which these decisions were made were examined. Results: Of the total 394 consultation requests, 53.6% (n = 211) were for males. The acceptance rate was 40.9% (n = 161). The most common primary diagnosis category was gastrointestinal cancers (21.6%), the most common consulting branch was emergency department (44.6%), the most common reason for rejection (53.2%) was the patient's acute problems and the most common reason for acceptance was the need for nutritional support with a rate of 64.0%. Conclusion: It has been determined that most of the consultations requests were not accepted. It is necessary to use SPCS more effectively.