What are the Challenges for Evaluating a Palliative Care Service?

Abstract

This paper identifies the challenges in researching the impact of a rural palliative care service on its patients, carers and providers in the context of the National Palliative Care Strategy. It describes the use of an anthropological method to overcome problems of acceptability and respondent burden and to enable the elaboration of meaning and valuation by participants. It uses the Griffith Area Palliative Care Service as a case study to illustrate the problems of such research and the value of the anthropological method over more conventional research and evaluation approaches. It makes recommendations about how to assess the outcomes of services such as palliative care where the focus of care is complex, individual and family, and the outcomes go far beyond what can be measured with the medical model.