National on-line survey to explore health professional understanding of Palliative care provision in end stage liver disease

Following a recent national meeting of medical, nursing and allied health professionals interested in the provision of better end of life care for people with cirrhosis, held at the Royal Free Hospital, London on November 2013, we are now conducting a national survey looking at palliative care provision in liver services across the UK.

The aims of this survey include:

1. Exploring the perceptions of health care professionals surrounding the role of palliative care in the management of cirrhosis.

2. Determining the level of palliative involvement in local liver services.

3. Identifying any issues surrounding access to palliative care.

This survey is aimed at three groups of health professionals: those working in hepatology and gastroenterology, those working in specialist palliative care and General Practitioners with an interest in gastroenterology. We hope that our findings will help to improve future collaboration between palliative care, liver services and primary care.

It will take about 5-10 minutes to fill in this short survey. The results will be anonymised.

We encourage all nurses, doctors or allied health professionals in each institution to fill out this survey (even if you work in the same institution/department), as it aims to sample individual perception. Please click on the link below to fill in this survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/eolc_patients_with_cirrhosis

We have obtained ethical permission from UCL to conduct this survey (3552/002).

If you have any further questions about this survey, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Joe Low, Senior Research Fellow, Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Unit, (UCL) either by e-mail joseph.low@ucl.ac.uk or by phone on 020 7679 9718.

This survey is distributed by the APM but not endorsed by them and there is no recommendation from the APM that this should be completed.