Arif Kamal: Which cancer patients should get palliative care?

Arif Kamal, Chief Patient Officer at American Cancer Society, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Which cancer patients should get palliative care?

A book, with five chapters.

Chapter 1 – people who are actively dying (1950-1982).
Chapter 2 – people who are prognosticated to be dying soon (1983-1997).
Chapter 3 – people with incurable cancer (1997-2015).
Chapter 4 – people with advanced cancer or high symptom needs (2015-2023).
Chapter 5 – people with cancer who are suffering in some way (2024-onwards).

Paradigm shift from the STEP-PC trial reported in JAMA.

This was such an important study for us to enroll patients at Duke Cancer Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts General Hospital because we all felt the need for a pragmatic approach to scheduling patients to see us in clinic.

For my patients, it brought a rationale to why and when they were given an appointment.

To me, with an ever-present concern about the capacity and bandwidth of myself and my colleagues, a peace of mind that my patients were well when not in my office, and just-in-time scheduling when something was going awry.

So glad to see this five-year labor of love clinical trial come to publication, and very excited for how this will shape palliative care delivery from now into the future.”

Additional information.
Source: Arif Kamal/LinkedIn