The number of residents in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) in need of palliative care is growing in the Western world. Therefore, it is foreseen that significantly higher percentages of budgets will be spent on palliative care. However, cost-effectiveness analyses of palliative care interventions in these settings are lacking. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to assess the cost-effectiveness of the ‘PACE Steps to Success’ intervention. PACE (Palliative Care for Older People) is a 1-year palliative care programme aiming at integrating general palliative care into day-to-day routines in LTCFs, throughout seven EU countries.
Context: To provide high-quality palliative care to nursing home residents, staff need to understand the basic principles of palliative care.
Objectives: to evaluate the extent of agreement with the basic principles of palliative care of nurses and care assistants working in nursing homes in five European countries and to identify correlates.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in 214 homes in Belgium, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. Agreement with basic principles of palliative care was measured with the Rotterdam MOVE2PC. We calculated percentages and odds ratios of agreement and an overall score between 0 (no agreement) and 5 (total agreement).
Results: Most staff in all countries agreed that palliative care involves more than pain treatment (58% Poland to 82% Belgium) and includes spiritual care (62% Italy to 76% Belgium) and care for family or relatives (56% Italy to 92% Belgium). Between 51% (the Netherlands) and 64% (Belgium) correctly disagreed that palliative care should start in the last week of life and 24% (Belgium) to 53% (Poland) agreed that palliative care and intensive life-prolonging treatment can be combined. The overall agreement score ranged between 1.82 (Italy) and 3.36 (England). Older staff (0.26; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.09–0.43, P = 0.003), nurses (0.59; 95% CI: 0.43–0.75, P < 0.001), and staff who had undertaken palliative care training scored higher (0.21; 95% CI: 0.08–0.34, P = 0.002).
Conclusions: The level of agreement of nursing home staff with basic principles of palliative care was only moderate and differed between countries. Efforts to improve the understanding of basic palliative care are needed.
BACKGROUND: End-of-life care practices in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) are the focus of growing attention in Europe, due to rapidly increasing number of older persons living in LTCFs. The knowledge about end-of-life discussions or existence of written advance directives in the European LTCFs is scarce. This study's aim is to investigate the prevalence of written advance directives and their sociodemographic associates, among recently deceased LTCF residents, in six European countries.
METHODS: Data from the European Union-funded PACE database were collected from 322 LTCFs in six European countries in 2014. The assessments were performed by using two questionnaires designed for LTCF administrative staff and for staff member.LTCFs were selected within each country by using proportional stratified random sampling procedure. Facilities with certain types and sizes were included from each country.Multilevel multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate associations between written advance directives and selected predictors.
RESULTS: In total, 32.5 % of the 1384 deceased LTCF residents had a written advance directive with a range from 0% to 77 % between countries. The proportion of the most common advance directive, 'Do not resuscitate in case of cardiac or respiratory arrest (DNR)', varied correspondingly from 0% to 75%.LTCF type (OR 2.86 95% CI 1.59 to 5.23) and capability of expressing at the time of admission (OR 3.26 95% CI 2.26 to 4.71) were the independent predictors for advance directive. Residents living in LTCFs where physician was available were less likely to have advance directive compared with residents from LTCFs where physician was not available.
CONCLUSION: Extensive differences for prevalence of written advance directive exist between countries among older LTCF residents in Europe. Timely and appropriate response to LTCF resident's health needs and preferences efforts advance care planning.