Improving End-of-life Care by Continuing Medical Education and Electronic Decision Making Support for General Practitioners

Background: Optimizing the basic palliative care has been shown beneficial to patients in end-of-life care, the general practitioner (GP) having a pivotal role in the health care system, providing comprehensive and continued medical care.

The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of a complex intervention in general practice on GPs' awareness of and confidence in providing end-of-life care.

Method: A follow-up study among 404 general practices in Central Denmark Region. The participating general practices will get the opportunity to receive education in palliative care and access to an electronic support, which provides advice on palliative care and an overview of the palliative population in each medical practice. The education and the support will focus on patients suffering from either metastatic cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (GOLD stage 4).

The end-of-life care delivered by the GPs to their deceased patients will be analysed, based on questionnaires to GPs and register data related to the deceased patients before and after the intervention, .

Primary outcomes: Place of death of deceased patients, time spent at home, and number of hospital admissions in the last three months of the patients' lives.

Secondary outcomes: Number and kinds of contacts between GPs and patients, use of relevant medicine and of the 'Safety Box'. Finally GPs' confidence concerning palliative care will be assessed in questionnaires.