Palliative care telephone consultation: who calls and what do they need to know?

Access to expertise in palliative management in areas not served by palliative care consultants is an ongoing challenge. This study examines a unique service offered in British Columbia: a 24-hour telephone hotline available to physicians, nurses, and pharmacists across the province.

Records of calls to the hotline over 4 years were collected. Call data included information on the caller, patient, and problem. The resulting database was analyzed for trends, including cross-tabulations to look for associations between call characteristics.

Six hundred ninety-two calls were included. A large variety of topics were addressed in significant numbers, ranging from symptom control to ethical concerns. The primary reason for calls to the line was pain management, followed by gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, diarrhea, and bowel obstruction. Patients with cancer diagnoses dominated the call volume; lung, colon, breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer were the most common specific diagnoses. The majority of calls, when analyzed by population, came from areas with significant rural populations.

British Columbia's Palliative Care Hotline provides a valuable service that has been utilized province-wide with increasing frequency over the 6 years it has been in operation. It serves a variety of professionals and significant number of patients. Rural communities utilize the service with the most frequency, indicating the support needed in these communities. Similar services should be considered in other jurisdictions.