What palliative care–related problems do patients with drug-resistant or drug-susceptible tuberculosis experience on admission to hospital? A cross-sectional self-report study

Background:The new World Health Organization’s ‘End TB’ strategy specifies palliative care within its strategic pillars. Limited data on patient-reported problems are available to inform an effective care response.Aim:We aimed to (1) identify most burdensome problems, (2) compare intensity of problems for drug-susceptible and drug-resistant tuberculosis and (3) identify predictors of problem identifiers.Design:Cross-sectional self-report quantitative study.Setting/participants:Self-report palliative care problems (physical, psychological, social and spiritual) were collected among patients on admission to a general district hospital with tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis wards in South Africa.Results:Totally, 114 patients were recruited. The items with worst score responses were worry (60.5%), pain (42.1%), help and advice to plan for the future (35.1%), symptoms (29.0%) and ability to share feelings (25.1%). In ordinal logistic regression, age was predictive of a higher (worse) score for ...