Palliative and end-of-life care must become a priority in healthcare, a cancer charity has said. Macmillan Cancer Support said emergency departments were not the right places to care for terminally ill people. Their comments come after new research conducted by Macmillan and the NI Cancer Registry at Queen's University.
The report highlights the need for planning and communication around end-of-life care. It also found late diagnosis of cancer to be a problem. Among the research's findings is that three quarters of cancer patients who died in Northern Ireland in 2015 were admitted to A&E at least once in the last year of their lives.
"Emergency departments cannot provide the very specialist care needed by cancer patients", said Heather Monteverde, Macmillan's Head of Service.
Source: BBC News, 8 August 2019
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