Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF GENERAL PRACTICE
Volume 59, Issue 566, Pages 665-670Publisher
ROYAL COLL GENERAL PRACTITIONERS
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp09X454124
Keywords
advance care planning; end-of-life care; general practitioner; palliative care; preferred place of death; terminal care
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Funding
- Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders [050158]
- Flemish and Walloon Community of Belgium
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Background Being able to die in one's place of choice is an indicator of the quality of end-of-life care. GPs may play a key role in exploring and honouring patients' preferences for place of death. Aim To examine how often GPs are informed about patients' preferred place of death, by whom and for which patients, and to study the expressed preferred place of death and how often patients die at their preferred place. Design of study One-year nationwide mortality retrospective study. Setting Sentinel Network of GPs in Belgium, 2006. Method GPs' weekly registration of all deaths (patients aged >= 1 year). Results A total of 798 non-sudden deaths were reported. GPs were informed of patients' preferred place of death in 46% of cases. GPs obtained this information directly from patients in 63%. GP awareness was positively associated with patients not being hospitalised in the last 3 months of life (odds ratio [OR] = 3.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.8 to 5.6), involvement of informal caregivers (OR 3.3; 95% Cl = 1.8 to 6.1), use of a multidisciplinary palliative care team (OR = 2.5; 95% Cl = 1.8 to 3.5), and with presence of more than seven contacts between GP and patient or family in the last 3 months of life (OR = 3.0; 95% Cl = 2.2 to 4.3). In instances where GPs were informed, more than half of patients (58%) preferred to die at home. Overall, 80% of patients died at their preferred place. Conclusion GPs are often unaware of their patients' preference for place of death. However, if GPs are informed, patients often die at their preferred location. Several healthcare characteristics might contribute to this and to a higher level of GP awareness.
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