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General practitioners' use and experiences of palliative care services: a survey in south east England

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Palliative Care, November 2008
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Title
General practitioners' use and experiences of palliative care services: a survey in south east England
Published in
BMC Palliative Care, November 2008
DOI 10.1186/1472-684x-7-18
Pubmed ID
Authors

Sabrina Bajwah, Irene J Higginson

Abstract

The role of the General Practitioner (GP) is central to community palliative care. Good liaison between the different professionals involved in a patient's care is extremely important in palliative care patients. In cases where GPs have previously been dissatisfied with palliative services, this may be seen as a barrier to referral when caring for other patients. The aim of this survey is to investigate the use and previous experiences of GPs of two palliative care services, with particular emphasis on barriers to referral and to explore issues surrounding the GP's role in caring for palliative patients. Descriptive postal survey of use and experience of palliative care services with particular emphasis on barriers to referral. One Primary Care Trust (PCT), south London, England, population 298,500. 180 GPs in the PCT, which is served by two hospice services (A&B). An overall questionnaire response rate of 77% (138) was obtained, with 69% (124) used in analysis. Over 90% of GPs were satisfied with the palliative care services over the preceding two years. Two areas of possible improvement emerged; communication and prescribing practices. GPs identified some patients that they had not referred, most commonly when patients or carers were reluctant to accept help, or when other support was deemed sufficient. Over half of the GPs felt there were areas where improvement could be made; with clarification of the rules and responsibilities of the multi disciplinary team being the most common. The majority of GPs were working, and want to work with, the specialist services as part of an extended team. However, a greater number of GPs want to hand over care to the specialist services than are currently doing so. A large number of GPs were happy with the service provision of the palliative care services in this area. They suggested that 3 out of 4 terminally ill patients needed specialist input. Views of services were largely positive, and reasons for non referral were unrelated to previous experience of the specialist services.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 24 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 24 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 4 17%
Student > Master 4 17%
Student > Bachelor 3 13%
Student > Postgraduate 3 13%
Professor > Associate Professor 2 8%
Other 6 25%
Unknown 2 8%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 13 54%
Nursing and Health Professions 4 17%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 1 4%
Social Sciences 1 4%
Psychology 1 4%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 4 17%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 November 2015.
All research outputs
#15,349,796
of 22,832,057 outputs
Outputs from BMC Palliative Care
#1,093
of 1,253 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#78,910
of 92,997 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Palliative Care
#1
of 1 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,832,057 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
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