| Summary: | Objective: To gain an understanding of the profile of callers to BC's toll free Palliative Care Hotline, and geographic areas which seem most in need of assistance in Palliative care. To establish common themes of calls to the Hotline in order to guide future educational efforts, and to determine the perceived usefulness of an internet-based resource for palliative care information.Design: Logs of calls to the Palliative Care Hotline were analyzed (exact methods yet to be determined), and callers to the line in October and November 2006 were contacted for brief interviews.Setting: The study was based in Vancouver, BC out of UBC Department of Family Practice, callers to the Hotline are from BC, Yukon and Nunavut, and are primarily in rural areas.Participants: Health care professionals utilizing the hotline, including family doctors, registered nurses and pharmacists.Main Outcome Measures: From caller logs: role of caller, location, patient diagnosis and reason for the call. From interviews: qualitative data analysis.Results: By call, an equal number of doctors and nurses utilized the hotline. By capita, a predominance of callers were from BC's Northern and Interior Health Authorities. While half of the calls were regarding pain management issues, a wide variety of problems were addressed. (futher results to follow from stats analysis).Conclusion: The BC based Pallitiative Care Hotline provides a valuable service to General Practitioners, community and hospital based RNs, and occasional other health professionals who have a need for, and otherwise poor access to pallitive medicine specialists. While used relatively infrequently, the service provides valuable input to patient management.
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