abstract: Preferences for place of death if faced with advanced cancer: a population survey in England, Flanders, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain

Blogger' Note: implications (and distortions) for policy makers continue on this issue aside from this specific paper; assumptions on place of death are generally faulty (IMHO)

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Background: Cancer end-of-life care (EoLC) policies assume people want to die at home. We aimed to examine variations in preferences for place of death cross-nationally.

Methods: A telephone survey of a random sample of individuals aged ≥16 in England, Flanders, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. We determined where people would prefer to die if they had a serious illness such as advanced cancer, facilitating circumstances, personal values and experiences of illness, death and dying.

open access: Canada - Predictors of Home Care Expenditures and Death at Home for Cancer Patients in an Integrated Comprehensive Palliative Home Care Pilot Program Longwoods - Healthcare Policy

Blogger's Note: see excerpts/notes in italics

Purpose:

Empirical understanding of predictors for home care service use and death at home is important for healthcare planning. Few studies have examined these predictors in the context of the publicly funded Canadian home care system. This study examined predictors for home care use and home death in the context of a “gold standard” comprehensive palliative home care program pilot in Ontario where patients had equal access to home care services.

"....Care at home in the final weeks of life and an adequately supported home death is a goal expressed by most patients with a terminal illness (Higginson and Sen-Gupta 2000 (excerpt from abstract.......Respondents indicated preferences for home death (range 49%-100%), except one study of patients in the care of a continuing care team in London where only 25%-29% of patients wanted a home death, and inpatient hospice was the most favored option.........Only 2 of the studies provided longitudinal data, and 9 of the 18 had major deficits in design or reporting..........) ;

Teirnan et al. 2002 (Blogger's Note: this study was from Dublin and the abstract does not indicate whether cancer patients were included);

Townsend et al. 1990).  

It is also a health system policy imperative (Romanow 2000) (Blogger's Note: no reference/link provided)............."

Dying at home: community nurses' views on the impact of informal carers on cancer patients' place of death European Journal of Cancer Care

Note: abstract; one of the few articles which challenges mainstream research discussing the issues of dying at home and the wishes of patients/caregiver.