Qualitative analysis revealed 4 main results
. 1/ For respondents, palliative care introduction meant impending death.
2/ Palliative care introduction meant loss of hope. Without hope, the cancer trajectory is impossible to sustain, they said.
3/ Hope was intricately interwoven with the request for more chemotherapy, even if doctors had clearly refused to provide it.
4/ The oncologist remained the referent physician, even for patients in hospice care.
Patients for which the mean duration between cancer diagnosis and interview was 5 years or more, were more willing to talk about death and better accepted palliative care than patients for which the mean duration of cancer was inferior to 3 yrs.
For patients with fast progressing cancer (n = 11), 10 were not willing to talk about death and 7 strongly resisted palliative care introduction. There was no difference between patients according to age, sex, type of cancer or center of inclusion. Conclusions: In the terminal phase of cancer, patients are unwilling to talk about death and are reluctant to meet with palliative care teams. Short disease duration strongly reinforces this attitude. If patients resist discussions about their impending death, should physicians continue to consider it good practice to introduce such discussions? Is it beneficent for patients?
. 1/ For respondents, palliative care introduction meant impending death.
2/ Palliative care introduction meant loss of hope. Without hope, the cancer trajectory is impossible to sustain, they said.
3/ Hope was intricately interwoven with the request for more chemotherapy, even if doctors had clearly refused to provide it.
4/ The oncologist remained the referent physician, even for patients in hospice care.
Patients for which the mean duration between cancer diagnosis and interview was 5 years or more, were more willing to talk about death and better accepted palliative care than patients for which the mean duration of cancer was inferior to 3 yrs.
For patients with fast progressing cancer (n = 11), 10 were not willing to talk about death and 7 strongly resisted palliative care introduction. There was no difference between patients according to age, sex, type of cancer or center of inclusion. Conclusions: In the terminal phase of cancer, patients are unwilling to talk about death and are reluctant to meet with palliative care teams. Short disease duration strongly reinforces this attitude. If patients resist discussions about their impending death, should physicians continue to consider it good practice to introduce such discussions? Is it beneficent for patients?
No comments:
Post a Comment