Identified Palliative Care Approach Needs with SPICT in Family Practice: A Preliminary Observational Study

Identifying patients who require palliative care approach is challenging for family physicians, even though several identification tools have been developed for this purpose.

To explore the prevalence and characteristics of family practice patients who need palliative care approach as determined using Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT™, April 2015) in Japan.

Single-center cross-sectional study.

We enrolled all patients ≥65 years of age who visited the chief researcher's outpatient clinic in October 2016.

We used Japanese version of SPICT (SPICT-J) to identify patients who need palliative care approach. We assessed patients' backgrounds and whether they had undergone advance care planning with their family physicians.

This study included 87 patients (61 females) with a mean age of 79.0 ± 7.4 years. Eight patients (9.2%) were identified as needing palliative care approach. The mean age of patients who needed this approach was 82.3 ± 8.3 years and main underlying conditions were heart/vascular disease (37.5%), dementia/frailty (25.0%), and respiratory disease (12.5%). Only two of eight patients identified as needing palliative care approach had discussed advance care planning with their family physicians.

In family practice, 9.2% of outpatients ≥65 years of age were identified as needing palliative care approach. Family physicians should carefully evaluate whether outpatients need palliative care approach.