[Identification of palliative care patients :issues and screening tools]

From a health care perspective, and in order to improve the quality of care, early identification of palliative patients is a necessary step for the development of palliative care. Unfortunately, this early identification is still sub-optimal, resulting in a delayed introduction of palliative care in the patients' health care pathway. Although several tools exist to support health care professionals in this endeavour, their level of validity is incomplete, and they do not distinguish between patients in need of general versus specialised palliative care. A new tool which strives to better answer these criteria is presently being developed and validated at the CHUV.