Background: Evidence suggests that involving General Practitioners in the care of patients with palliative care needs may improve patient outcomes.
Aim: To evaluate whether a two-tiered intervention involving training in palliative care and a new consultation model in primary care for patients with palliative care needs is feasible and could reduce patients' symptom burden.
Design: Before-after study including an internal pilot.
Setting/participants: Nine general practitioners working in a health region in Portugal and 53 patients with palliative care needs from their patient lists were recruited. General Practitioners received training in palliative care and used a new primary palliative care consultation model, with medical consultations every 3 weeks for 12 weeks. The primary outcome was physical symptom burden, self-reported using the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) patient version (min.0-max.1000). Secondary outcomes included emotional symptoms (min.0-max.400) and communication/practical issues (min.0-max.300).
Results: Of the 35/53 patients completed the 12-week intervention (mean age 72.53 years, SD = 13.45; 54.7% female). All had advanced disease: one third had cancer (n = 13), one third had congestive heart failure (n = 12); others had chronic kidney disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. After the 12 weeks of intervention, there was a reduction in physical symptom burden [mean difference from baseline of 71.42 (95%CI 37.01-105.85) with a medium-large effect size (0.71], and in emotional symptom burden [mean difference 42.86 (95%CI 16.14-69.58), with a medium effect size (0.55)]. No difference was found for communication/practical issues.
Conclusions: Our intervention can be effective in reducing patients' physical and emotional symptoms.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov ID - NCT05244590. Registration: 14th February 2022.
Keywords: Primary health care; education; general practitioners; palliative care; signs and symptoms.