National and international non-therapeutic recommendations for adult palliative and end-of-life care in times of pandemics: A scoping review

Abstract

Abstract Objective The care of seriously ill and dying people is an important task, especially in times of pandemics and regardless of the patients’ infection status. Before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, healthcare systems were not sufficiently prepared for the challenges of palliative and end-of-life care during a pandemic. The aim was to identify and synthesize relevant aspects and non-therapeutic recommendations of palliative and end-of-life care of seriously ill and dying people, infected and uninfected, and their relatives after one year into the pandemic to outline what actions, practices, and procedures were taken to deal with the pandemic and its consequences. Method A scoping literature review following the methods of the PRISMA-ScR. The electronic literature search was conducted in 09/2020 and updated in 02/2021 using MEDLINE (Pubmed), with no restriction of publication date and eligibility criteria. In addition, a manual search was carried out. Results A total of 280 studies met the inclusion criteria and three main aspects have emerged. The reduction of physical contact due to the risk of infection severely limited the work of palliative care professionals and solutions had to be found to maintain palliative and end-of-life care structures. This has been accompanied by strict visitor restrictions and the need to support patients, relatives, and enable contact. The third relevant aspect is the integration of specialist palliative care expertise into other clinical settings. Significance of results This scoping review demonstrates the need for basic palliative care training for every healthcare professional. It supports the importance of developing a national strategy for palliative care in pandemic times in every country, including the digitalization of the healthcare sector to offer telecommunication/telemedicine.