Palliative care

Palliative care is an integral part of providing excellent treatment and support for people with cancer and their families: from the time of diagnosis through tumor therapy, to the end of life. This is the focus of the Palliative Care Working Group (Arbeitsgruppe (AG) Palliativmedizin), which was founded in 2011 as a collaboration of all palliative care institutions within the funded Comprehensive Cancer Centers (CCCs) in Germany. Regular meetings are held with professionals from various fields involved in palliative care, including medicine, nursing, psychology, and psycho-oncology. 

Key areas of focus for the palliative care work and its coordinating office include:

• Developing and updating Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for palliative care. The SOPs here are published by Springer Medizin Verlag. 

• Structured integration and evaluation of palliative care in care, teaching and research of German CCCs (see for example Berendt et al. 2016, Berendt et al. 2017).

• Development of methods to identify palliative care needs (screening) in oncology patients (Roch C et al. 2021)

• Develop structured processes to support families in oncology care (Oubaid et al. 2022)

• Establishing palliative care interfaces outside the CCCs, such as in other hospitals, general practitioner and oncology practices, and outpatient services.

• Collaborate across CCC network working groups, for example Outreach (AG Outreach) and Psycho-Oncology/Cancer Self-Help (AG Psychoonkologie/Krebs-Selbsthilfe). 

• Developing joint research projects.

• Providing training and information materials.

To improve structures, processes, and exchange in palliative care, the Palliative Care Working Group published Best Practice Recommendations for the integration of palliative care into CCCs (Berendt et al. 2016). These recommendations are essential for the German Cancer Aid's funding program when assessing the CCCs palliative care. The implementation of the Best Practice Recommendations (Gahr et al. 2020) and SOPs (Lödel et al. 2020; Stachura et al. 2017) is actively promoted by the Palliative Care Working Group and the Coordination Office.

The results of the working group are reviewed and disseminated annually by the Expert Advisory Board of the Palliative Care Working Group, which includes representatives from other professional societies, associations and institutions.