Early palliative care: Recognizing the patient in need of palliative care and proactive palliative care planning with the GP as coordinator--An RCT.

69 Background: In the Netherlands, many patients that might profit of palliative care don't receive it or don't receive it until the terminal phase. GPs in the Netherlands consider palliative care as an important task, but they don't feel confident to recognize the patients in need of palliative care and to provide it in a structured way. For that reason, we performed an RCT in which GPs in the intervention condition received training in recognozing the palliative patient and in early palliative care provision. Methods: Randomized controlled cluster trial (intention to treat) with GP as cluster. GPs in the intervention group received a 5-hours training in early recognition of the palliative patient, with the help of the RADPAC tool, and in proactive palliative care planning. They were invited to identify the patients in need of palliative care and provide the care as learned in the training. Primary outcome: number of out-of-hours contacts with the out-of-hours service, as measured retrospectively by anal...