ArticleBMC palliative care2025
Social support sources for people with palliative care needs at home: a scoping review.
Article in BMC palliative care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Reasons for patients in high income countries accessing hospital care while receiving specialist community palliative care: A systematic review and meta-ethnography.Palliative medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Relevance and consequence of economic and social resources of severely ill persons and their informal caregivers at the end-of-life: a systematic review of qualitative studies.BMC palliative care · 2025Pooled it
- Barriers and facilitators to palliative care service utilization in Ethiopia: A qualitative systematic review, 2025.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- How social, psychological, and spiritual needs are supported in the last months of life: evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing end-of-life interviews.Age and ageing · 2026Article
- Perceived and received support among patients with cancer receiving palliative care in Malta: a qualitative study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Unclear boundaries: Family caregivers' invisible role in home-based palliative care in Norway: an exploratory analysis of secondary data from two previous studies.International journal of nursing studies advances · 2026Article
- Patients' and relatives' perspectives on the quality of end-of-Life care in advanced cancer: From the final months to bereavement.PloS one · 2026Article
- Identifying the factors contributing to hospital readmissions in palliative care: a mixed-methods study from a Turkish palliative care unit.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- Social support and psychological distress among family caregivers of palliative patients at two rural hospitals in Malawi: a cross-sectional study.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- Palliative treatment and social support needs in patients with liver, gallbladder, and pancreatic tumors.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Important Elements of Quality Home End-of-Life Care in China.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Social support and depressive symptoms in older adults receiving hospice care: the mediating role of developmental task attainment.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRecent literature suggests an increase in attention for the social dimension of palliative care. However, who provides social support to patients with palliative care needs at home and their relatives is often unclear, and insight in the role of the community and professionals with a main focus on social support, not being health care professionals, is lacking in this respect. Therefore, in this study we explore social support for people with palliative care needs residing at home and their relatives, provided by the community and professionals from the welfare domain, and want to understand when social support is experienced as sufficient by the recipient.
methodsA scoping review was conducted to search for literature on social support by the community and professionals from the welfare domain to people with palliative care needs at home, using the databases PubMed and Web of Sciences for studies published between January 1, 2007, and June 1, 2023.
resultsSocial support to people at home with palliative care needs and their relatives is mainly provided by informal caregivers, namely family, friends and neighbours. These people providing social support is perceived as normal, natural and is expected by the recipient. Social support by the wider community and by professionals from the welfare domain can enhance, complement and/or substitute this support. Within the 27 included articles, nine studies provide results of social support interventions, which show that volunteer or professional services aimed at enhancing and mobilizing the informal social network of the patient are an important way of building supportive and sustainable social support networks.
conclusionsCommunity sources and professionals with a main focus on social support such as social workers can enhance, complement and substitute social support provided by the informal network, if needed. Structured approaches can improve recognition of unmet social problems and needs of people with palliative care needs at home.
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