Palliative care in primary health care: scoping review.

The review mapped evidence rather than testing an intervention, so it cannot show whether palliative care in primary health care improves symptoms, quality of life or survival. It included only original full-text articles from 2009 to 2019 in Portuguese, French, Spanish and English, so relevant studies in other languages, years or formats may have been missed. The 18 included publications were heterogeneous, with qualitative and quantitative designs and participants including professionals, caregivers, patients and medical records, so the map is not a single clinical answer. The review included 18 publications, of which 11 were published in Portuguese by Brazilian authors, so the map may reflect Brazilian primary health care more than other systems. The authors state that they did not problematize the different health systems where the studies were produced, and that primary health care is not always fully implemented, which limits direct transfer to other settings.

Do not read this review as evidence that palliative care in primary health care improves symptoms, quality of life or survival. It maps heterogeneous studies and reports possibilities, not tested effects.