Out-of-hours palliative care in the UK: perspectives from general practice and specialist services

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Abstract
Palliative care within the community requires well coordinated multidisciplinary teamworking, involving both primary and secondary care practitioners. ‘Out-of-hours’ periods are a potentially problematic time for delivery of high quality care. We report on two national surveys—one of medical directors of out-of-hours general practitioner cooperatives, the other of medical directors of specialist palliative care units. The aim was to describe general practitioners' and specialists' perspectives on the availability and scope of community nursing and specialist palliative care services.