The impact of the palliative care mobile team on symptom assessment and medication profiles in patients admitted to a comprehensive cancer center

Abstract

Goals of work: In recent years, tertiary care hospitals and cancer centers have shown great interest in forming palliative care consultation teams. Thus, these centers may be interested in the types of care that such teams give, which could help the other centers put together their own teams. However, the availability of such information is limited. The purpose of our study was therefore to describe the experience of a palliative care team at our comprehensive cancer center.

Materials and methods: We reviewed the medical records of 100 consecutive patients who were referred to our palliative care mobile team between November 2004 and January 2005; we then analyzed the primary interventions of this team.

Results: The median patient age was 61 years; 57 patients were female. The most frequent symptoms were fatigue in 78% and pain in 62% of patients. The main interventions by the palliative team were changes in medication types (opioids, antiemetics, neuroleptics, and laxatives) and in medication doses.

Conclusions: Palliative care mobile teams make multiple changes in previous medications and provide almost universal counseling services to patients and families. The length of involvement with the patient and family is short; therefore, rapid stabilization and counseling are required. Our findings regarding medication changes could be helpful to tertiary care hospitals and cancer centers considering palliative care consultation teams.