Should early referral to palliative care be standard of care for all patients with metastatic cancer?

There are data to support that early palliative care involvement can improve patient quality of life. One study that specifically comes to mind is a study published by Temel et al in NEJM 2010 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20818875) in the setting of metastatic NSCLC. This study randomized pat...

I certainly agree that ideally, it would indeed be most valuable for patients to have these conversations (illness understanding, coping, other) when they are at their best PS and health. Unfortunately, the available field of palliative care practioners is not large enough to meet this ideal. Much e...

I agree with @Dr. First Last. While there is a great deal of momentum towards the early integration of palliative care (with endorsement of this idea by the Institute of Medicine, ASCO, and others), there are too few palliative care specialists and teams to make this a scalable solution. It is estim...