Assistance to patients eligible for palliative care: the view of professionals from an Intensive Care Unit.
Matheus Rodrigues Martins, Juliana da Silva Oliveira, Alexandre Ernesto Silva and 3 others
PMID 35653616WHAT IT FOUND
ICU staff described care for patients eligible for palliative care as inconsistent: no clear protocols, poor communication, too few trained workers, and pain relief or basic care depending on who was on duty.
Key findings
01ICU professionals reported that too few workers and limited palliative care training compromised care for patients eligible for palliative care.
02Participants described missing protocols and poor communication, including one doctor recording palliative care and the next disagreeing and not documenting it.
03The reported outcome themes included inconsistent pain medication, incomplete basic care such as bathing, and impaired patient safety and quality of life.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Only staff perceptions were collected, not patients or families, so the paper does not show what actually happened to patients. It was done in one public hospital in inland Brazil with no specialized palliative care team or unit, so it may not apply to other ICUs. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling and interviews stopped at saturation, not by a random or exhaustive method. No participant had formal palliative care training courses, and 24 of the 35 had up to five years of ICU experience, so local unfamiliarity with palliative care may shape the findings. The study reports themes, not measured effects of any intervention.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these themes as proof that adding protocols or training will improve patient outcomes. This was a single-site interview study of staff perceptions, not a trial of an intervention.