The practice of early palliative care: A qualitative study of patient-clinician encounters.

Abstract

2 Background: Studies have shown that palliative care (PC) integrated early in the course of metastatic cancer, shortly after diagnosis, leads to improved patient outcomes. Unlike PC in the inpatient setting, PC initiated early, in the ambulatory setting, had not been well studied. Our aim was to elucidate the practice of early PC through analysis of PC clinic visit transcripts. Methods: As part of an ongoing study of early PC in patients with advanced lung and gastrointestinal cancers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, we are audio-recording patients’ outpatient PC clinic visits. To capture the range of PC content, we randomly selected five patients and analyzed three clinic transcripts per patient: early, midway, and late in each patient’s clinical course. We performed thematic analysis on these clinic transcripts using NVivo 10. Results: Our analysis suggests that the elements of early PC that occur most frequently across the disease course are managing symptoms, facilitating coping, and developing the relationship with patients and their family caregivers. Elements that tend to occur during clinical transitions include advising treatment decision-making, facilitating medical understanding, and advance care planning. Our analysis also identifies four broad approaches to PC that are applied longitudinally, over the course of the patient-clinician relationship: 1) eliciting versus commenting on patients’ perspectives, 2) alluding to and preparing for the future, 3) transitioning between managing symptoms and facilitating coping, and 4) transitioning between developing the relationship and facilitating coping. Lastly, we observe three specific techniques applied by PC clinicians: 1) coordinating with oncologists, 2) providing referrals, and 3) addressing family dynamics. Conclusions: Our study identifies the predominant elements, four longitudinal approaches, and three specific techniques of early PC. These novel insights can be applied to care delivered by both PC and non-PC clinicians, well before patients approach the end of life. The longitudinal approaches in particular may help explain the significance of early integration of PC into cancer care.