Evidence for Using an End of Life Care Pathway
The hospice model of care of the dying patient is regarded as the gold standard of care. End of life care pathways and integrated care pathways were developed based on the hospice approach as a means of monitoring and guiding clinical practice in the multi-disciplinary setting outcomes.
End of life care pathways were designed to guide the provision of care for the dying through the use of a single tool aimed at coordinating consistent multi-disciplinary practices.
End of life care pathways:
- Provide evidence of a shared consensus amongst treating physicians/clinicians that the primary goal of care has changed to palliation [1, 7]
- Address inconsistencies in care provisions by providing structured patient management strategies detailing essential steps in caring for patients in the final days and hours of their lives
- Facilitate the most appropriate management by the most appropriate providers at the most appropriate time
- Represent a formalised multi-disciplinary agreement that is implemented with the aim of achieving the best patient outcomes
- Are a quality improvement measure to maximise the care of our most vulnerable population, the dying
- Provide the opportunity for benchmarking and auditing to ensure that your service is providing best practice
- Are supportive tools for use in services that are not represented by palliative care specialists, in particular in rural and regional settings and for services seeking to provide a standardised tool to aid decision-making by less experienced practitioners
- This in turn may lead to an improved quality of life during the last phase of care
- Are used extensively nationally and internationally and are widely regarded as the gold standard of palliative care [8, 14].
