A qualitative study exploring perceptions and experiences of patients and clinicians of Palliative Medicine Outpatient Clinics in different settings

Palliative care exists in a variety of settings and palliative care teams form many guises within this. A Palliative Medicine Outpatient Clinic (PMOC) exists to meet the flexible provision of the needs and preferences of individuals within whatever care setting they reside. This explorative study used a qualitative methodology, capturing patients' actual experience of care in preference to their satisfaction, as this is a more accurate measure of how and what patients judge as important in their healthcare. The overall themes in this paper point to the 'value' that patients perceived from attending the PMOC and how important the clinics were to clinicians that provided the care. The clinic facilitates much more than symptom control and here lies the challenge in how we convert the very positive experience of individuals into a language of outcome measures that captures the 'essence' of our work in this fiscally driven health economy.