UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Objective: The interface between acute cancer care and palliative care is dynamic. There must be a willingness of the two domains of care to develop an understanding of mutual roles, capabilities and contributions. When this fails, opportunities to maximise patient care are squandered.

We recognise the critical role for palliative care specialists to guide and coordinate the range of palliative options in decision making. The heart of palliative care practice is the focus on the patient and family as the unit of care. From this focus, treatment triage occurs. Such a focus demands a shift from the tumor based care which currently guides oncologic practice. Melding of the two approaches is required.

Methods: Our service has developed over the past 25 years. Recent growth has allowed increased liaison with tumor streams, increased involvement in coordinating care and discharge planning which is an important component of end of life care. . Results: We will present data on the impact of these interventions, focussing on improved depth of decision making, better coordination of the palliative options available at our centre, the ways in which we encourage palliative care referral via liaison in the ambulatory care areas and through the key role of our nurse consultants in discharge planning and follow up of outpatients.

We will present clinical scenarios and discuss the ways in which our team integrates with tumor streams with examples from the melanoma service and OnTrac (a program for care of adolescents and young adults with cancer).