Late referral, crisis referral, non-referral or unnecessary referral can all potentially affect the quality of life of patients and their carers. There is currently a lack of national agreement around when it is appropriate to refer and what are the appropriate reasons or triggers for referral to specialist palliative care services.

The Centre for Health Research and Psycho-Oncology (CHeRP) at the University of Newcastle is developing and disseminating consensus based guidelines and associated tools for the appropriate referral of cancer patients to palliative care services.

The Guidelines are designed to provide information to assist decision making and are based on the best evidence available at the time of publication. The Palliative Care Needs Assessment Guidelines and an accompanying Palliative Care Needs Assessment Tool are currently undergoing evaluation and may be revised in 2009 pending the outcomes of the evaluation research. A summary version of the guidelines is available at the CHeRP website. Information on the evaluation of the needs assessment tool can be found on the Cancer Council New South Wales website.

This page was created on 21 November 2006 and will be reviewed in November 2008
Last updated 22 February 2007