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Textbook of Palliative Care pp 1–23Cite as

Home Care, Primary Care

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Abstract

Care at the end of life has developed into a sophisticated specialty, historically modeled around the needs of incurable cancer in terms of complex, rapidly developing symptomatology and psychopathology in a predictable time frame. It is ill-equipped to manage people dying of other conditions, and the aging of the population will see the rise of multimorbidity, frailty, dementia, and organ failure as predominant causes of disability and death. The existing specialized, hospital-focused, and subspecialized health system that currently manages very ill people will not be able to cope with the complexity, multimorbidity, and unpredictability that characterize the future. Generalists, particularly community-based services, will inevitably have a very significant role to play.

This chapter examines the role of primary care, specifically general practice, in managing end-of-life care. It describes the similarities between the aims and objectives of general practice and palliative care, the scope of generalist end-of-life care, the past performance of general practice at the end of life, and models of care that can enhance both GP performance and integration between specialists and generalists. It concludes with initiatives that will facilitate national policy development to promote effective end-of-life care.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Primary Care Clinical Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Geoffrey Mitchell

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  1. Geoffrey Mitchell
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Correspondence to Geoffrey Mitchell .

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  1. HammondCare Learning and Research Centre, Greenwich Hospital, Greenwich, NSW, Australia

    Roderick Duncan MacLeod

  2. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB-UGent End-of-Life Care Research Grou Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Lieve Van den Block

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Mitchell, G. (2019). Home Care, Primary Care. In: MacLeod, R., Van den Block, L. (eds) Textbook of Palliative Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31738-0_48-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31738-0_48-2

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  1. Latest

    Home Care, Primary Care
    Published:
    10 December 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31738-0_48-2

  2. Original

    Home Care, Primary Care
    Published:
    11 June 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31738-0_48-1

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