Understanding the Barriers to Introducing Early Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Cancer: A Qualitative Study

Background: Palliative care is often underutilized or initiated late in the course of life-threatening illness. Randomized clinical Early Palliative Care (EPC) trials provide an opportunity for changing oncologists' perceptions of palliative care and their attitudes to referring patients to palliative care services.

Aim: To describe French oncologists' perceptions of EPC and their effects on referral practices before a clinical EPC trial was launched.

Design: A qualitative study involving semistructured face-to-face interviews. The data were analyzed using the Grounded Theory coding method.

Setting/Participants: Thirteen oncologists and 19 palliative care specialists (PCSs) working at 10 hospitals all over France were interviewed. Most of them were involved in clinical EPC trials.

Results: The findings suggest that referral to PCSs shortly after the diagnosis of advanced cancer increases the terminological barriers, induces avoidance patterns, and makes early disclosure of poor prognosis harder for oncologists. This situation is attributable to the widespread idea that palliative care means terminal care. In addition, the fact that the EPC concept is poorly understood increases the confusion between EPC and supportive care.

Conclusion: Defining the EPC concept more clearly and explaining to health professionals and patients what EPC consists of and what role it is intended to play, and the potential benefits of palliative care services could help to overcome the wording barriers rooted in the traditional picture of palliative care. In addition, training French oncologists how to disclose “bad news” could help them cope with the emotional issues involved in referring patients to specialized palliative care.