ArticlePalliative medicine2025
Community out-of-hours palliative care - 'It's a patchwork of services': A qualitative study exploring care provision.
Article in Palliative medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Provision of palliative and end-of-life care by community health nurses: A scoping review on the challenges and potential solutions.International journal of nursing studies advances · 2026Review
- Evaluation of community health service center training base by Shanghai hospice care competent nurse trainees: a qualitative study.BMC palliative care · 2026Article
- Health care assistants in out of hours community palliative care: multiple qualitative organisational case studies.BMC palliative care · 2026Article
- Setting research priorities for palliative and end-of-life care: a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership Refresh.BMJ open · 2026Article
- 'People ring because they're frightened': findings from a realist evaluation on the impact of timely responsive care at home at the end of life.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPeople in receipt of community palliative care usually receive care from a range of services and require access to care 24/7. However, care outside of normal working hours varies, with little understanding of which models of care are optimal.
aimTo identify and characterise current models of out-of-hours community palliative care in the UK and explore healthcare professionals' views on the barriers and facilitators to providing high quality community out-of-hours care.
designExploratory qualitative study using semi-structured interviews, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. SETTING AND
participantsWe recruited 39 healthcare professionals from 20 geographic areas. Participants were service leads from community palliative care, district/community nursing and primary care providers.
resultsFour overarching models of out-of-hours palliative care identified, characterised by levels of integration between services, balance between generalist and specialist providers, availability of care and type of care provided (hands-on clinical care/ advisory care). Analysis of barriers and facilitators generated three themes: (1) 'It's never one service': challenges of coordination of care across multiple services, (2) Need for timely skilled management of distressing symptoms, (3) 'We're just plugging gaps': prioritising patient care within limited resources. Patterns within the themes varied across the four models.
conclusionThis study identifies key characteristics of four common models of out-of-hours palliative care, from the perspectives of professionals. Facilitators of high quality out-of-hours care include: a palliative care specific single point of access for patients; formal structures to integrate generalist/specialist services; and timely/skilled management of symptoms. We provide recommendations for a potential model incorporating these factors.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.