The Work of Palliative Care Day Hospital in Cancer Trajectory. An Original Qualitative Research

Objective. - This paper presents a qualitative research about palliative care (PC) day hospital in oncology, a PC innovative health care organisation. Methods. - In 2 PC day hospitals, we used 38 semi-structured interviews with 12 professionals during 5 months in order to describe patients' care. The analysis was based on Glaser and Strauss' grounded theory and "illness trajectory" concept. Results. - The PC day hospital team operate a regular follow-up during several months for fragile patients with advanced cancer at home. The team works in 3 "lines of work": 1. management of illness, 2. organisation of daily-life and 3. biographical work. Thanks to expertise, propositions and prescriptions, the team can alleviate suffering, ameliorate home care and help patients to understand his/her incurable condition and sometimes end of life situation. Conclusion. - In France, PC Teams are called often near death and have poor autonomy. The conditions of work of PC Day Hospital (a place and enough time to work) give opportunity to PC teams to become sooner a referent for palliative care organisation. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.