Inpatient palliative medicine is evidence based.
Specialist palliative care services have previously been studied to see whether their intervention is of benefit. However, there is a lack of data on whether interventions in individual palliative care units are evidence based. This study looked at 32 problems and 114 interventions over 1 month in January 2000 in an inpatient palliative care unit. These interventions were then researched to see if there had been trials showing their benefit. The results were then classified: 81% were evidence based (randomized controlled trials 48%, evidence from other trials 27%, convincing non-experimental evidence 6%). This compares favourably with studies performed in other areas of medicine.
Good
P
P
Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Brisbane. phillipgood@uq.net.au
Stafford
B
B
D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006760:Hospitalization; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D009517:New South Wales; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000592:standards*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic