Psychosocial Aspects of Palliative Care: From Screening to Care Pathways
Sunday, 16 September 2007 - 1:30 - 5:00 pm
presented by Manoj Kumar MD, Dr Mike Bennett, Parvez Thekkumpurath PRCPsych, Alex Mitchell MD and Chitra Venkateswaran MD

Target Audience: People interested in the psychosocial aspects of palliative care including palliative care physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers,chaplains, volunteers and other allied health care professionals.

Workshop Objectives:

1. Summarise the evidence for psychosocial screening programmes in palliative care around the world.

2. Introduce approaches to screening and care pathways following screening programmes.

Workshop Description:

Psychological distress is well described in people with cancer. There is evidence for high levels of distress toward the end of life and it is not always recognised or adequately treated. Although research on psychosocial aspects of palliative care is gaining momentum, most of the research so far has been on people in early stages of their cancer journey. Screening programs are now beginning to be used in some acute cancer settings and a few have care pathways with integrated screening programs. There is a clear case to be made for screening programs and an integrated care pathway to address the high levels of distress in the palliative care population. The workshop will summarise the evidence so far in areas of screening and psychosocial care programs in palliative care.

The workshop will address specifically:

• The forms of psychosocial distress in palliative care;
• The various issues surrounding screening for psychosocial distress in palliative care and the related ethical aspects;
• Common screening questionnaires used in palliative care: their choice, validity of these questionnaires in a given population and methods to examine validity;
• Cross-cultural issues in screening, based on its unique experience of three projects examining the validity of various questionnaires in different cultural settings (in the UK and India);
• Touch screen technology: its feasibility, acceptance and advantages in screening programs based on the team’s experience of an ongoing project in Leeds which uses touch screen software developed by the Psychosocial and Clinical Research Practice Group, CRUK Clinical Centre, Leeds;
• Integrated psychosocial care pathways in palliative care with the emphasis on the need to link screening programmes to care pathways; and
• The potential of brief psychological interventions in the palliative care patients.